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Julia 


• < 


The Baroness Von Hutten 

« 






By The Baroness Von Hutten 


PAM 

PAM AT FIFTY 
MOTHERS-IN-LAW 
HAPPY HOUSE 
HELPING HERSEY 
KINGSMEADE 




i 


Julia 


BY 

The BARONESS VON HUTTEN 

IV 


/ 


NEW 



YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 




COPYRIGHT, 1924, 

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


/ 



JULIA 
— B — 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


DEC 1 n -P4 


» 

/ 




Cl A 81 417 

•w*. 




TO 

MY FIRST GRANDCHILD 

H. T. 









Julia 






Julia 


CHAPTER I 


[ i ] 


rpHE rain had ceased as the village fly crawled down 
the slope towards the house to see whose inmates I 
had come all the way from Rome. 

I had never before been in England, and the soft warm 
rain, sweet with the freshness of northern country springs, 
had pleased and satisfied me, but, though to my eyes 
nearly as much mist as rain, it had blurred my eager 
vision of things, so that I was glad when it stopped, leav¬ 
ing in the to me incredible pallor of the sudden after¬ 
noon sun the half-fledged trees and furry hedges softly 
gleaming, instead of all a-glitter. 

Since my landing that morning at Dover this quality 
of softness had been filling me with wonder, so different 
was it from the brilliance of Italy. The very locomo¬ 
tives, small and mild-looking, had seemed to me to be 
less sharply outlined, to have a less fiercely capable air 
than those in America, or in my long since adopted sec¬ 
ond fatherland. 

The sky seemed lower, less august, more intimate, and 
it had struck my vaguely ruminating mind that that 
9 


Julia 


10 

might possibly be the reason for the casual attitude of 
the average travelling Briton in regard to churchgoing. 
However, I knew so little, so nearly nothing about Eng¬ 
land, that my mood was one* of a happily bland recep¬ 
tivity, and my hours of cross-country creeping in quiet 
little trains had neither tired nor bored me, as both Julia 
and Poodle had warned me they would. 

The deeply-rooted English custom of going from 
pretty well every part of the Kingdom to pretty well 
every other part, via London, had not at all appealed to 
me, so I, had come in a series of little laps, waiting- at 
wayside stations, crawling over lines at every village in 
which we obligingly stopped to let out or take in farmers, 
and farmers’ wives and daughters; gliding* through the 
greenest meadows I had ever dreamt of, up and down 
comfortable hills where sheep barely glanced at us, so 
mild was the sound of our coming; all through the soft 
grey rain that blurred instead of spangling the young 
April foliage. 

An old woman gave me a little bunch of primroses 
(some of which, starring the sides of the railway-cutting, 
I had recognised with a pang of pleasure), and they were 
still in my buttonhole, delicately sweet, as the sun came 
out as it were in a whisper, and the fly stopped short. 

“That’s King’s Camel, sir,” the driver said, and I 
gazed down at the long, low, pinkish house, its windows 
bright as the setting sun struck them, its twisted chim¬ 
neys, two and two alike, but each pair different from the 
others, topped with mushroom-like hoods of damp-flat¬ 
tened smoke. 

Julia, who had been bom there, although it then be- 


Julia 


11 


longed to the old Duke, and who, during her childhood, 
had spent most of her holidays under its manifold and 
exquisite roofs, had, even as a little girl, described the 
old house to me; I had always known that the oldest part 
had once housed that unpleasant man, England’s only 
King John, and that when the duke’s ancestor of the 
period had been enriched by deserting Richard III., his 
benefactor, and going over to Tudor Henry, he had built 
the present beautiful house, as a worthy setting for his 
new baronial honours. 

I had been told of the nine-sided room, of the ancient 
stained-glass windows through which the sun sent loz¬ 
enges of glorious colour on to the stone floor and the 
battered old suits of armour that lined the walls of the 
hall; she had expatiated to me on the beauty of the 
green water in the moat, of the peacocks that stalked in 
excusable vanity in the narrow garden between the house 
and the water, and on the vast lawn (“smooth like 
mother’s velvet gown, Gray”), that on one side stretched, 
unbroken, to the beech-wood, where it was so good to 
play. 

All these things and many more I had been told by 
her during our century-long childhood, and, after the 
amazing birthday when Dukie, as she called her old 
great-uncle, had handed the whole place—lock, stock and 
barrel—over to her, saying that as it was his firm inten¬ 
tion to live to be a hundred, and as he much preferred 
London to the country, she might as well enjoy the old 
place while she was young, instead of inheriting it in 
her devastated fifties—she had written me literally vol¬ 
umes about the place. 


12 Julia 

But though I had known, I had never realised, and 
the beauty of its ripe age put a spell on me. 

Bor instance, I realised, as we drove through a modest 
Renaissance iron gateway that I had found for her years 
ago at Orvieto, that she had never told me, and I had been 
too ignorant to know, that the pink old bricks were laid 
with their narrow edges to the world, in the Roman way, 
a thing that makes a great difference in the beauty of a 
house. 

And, as we crawled up the short avenue, I realised that 
the house was far smaller than I had unconsciously ex¬ 
pected it to be. 

Roman palaces and so-called villas, often merely re¬ 
named castles, are of such vastness that this originally 
square-built jewel of architecture seemed to me a very 
small house—as indeed, compared to what are known as 
The Great Houses of England, it is. 

And all imaginative Americans will understand that 
as we crossed the drawbridge with a pleasant hollow 
sound, my blood ran quick, and the roots of my hair 
pricked; for, in spite of politician-made quarrels, greed 
for money, and vanity on both sides, we English-blooded 
Americans love England, with its manifold beauties so 
indifferent to obscurity, with what I believe to be a deep 
and abiding love. 

Thus I came, from Bakersville, Ohio, via Rome, to 
King’s Camel, over the hollowly echoing drawbridge, 
along the daffodil-edged inner drive, under the archway 
and across the flagged courtyard, to the wide open house 
door where, framed in ivy, Julia Vine-Innes stood, her 
lovely hands held out to welcome me. 


Julia 


13 


[ n ] 

I hate retrospective narration in a book, yet it must 
be told that we had met in Rome thirty-six years before, 
in the garden of the beautiful, shabby old palace the pian 
nobile of which her father had taken for his stay there 
as Second Secretary to his Embassy—or was it a Lega¬ 
tion then? I forget, if I ever knew. 

Sir Charles Ives had been a handsome little dandy in 
those days, with a tiny humming-bird-like wife, of whom 
my mother, I instinctively knew, did not approve. 

I was at the time only nine, but I knew my large, 
calm, beautiful mother very well, and indeed, so far as 
that goes, she made no secret of her dislike for the viva¬ 
cious, scented, golden-haired little lady downstairs, and I 
can remember that I was puzzled, in view of this dislike, 
by Lady Ives’ quite as obvious admiration for my mother. 

There were invitations brought up to our little home 
under the roof by a large and plushy footman named 
Hannibal, but my mother still, three years after his death, 
in mourning for “Mr. McEadden,” as she invariably 
called my father, never consented to accept them. 

We lived very quietly, indeed, at the top of our in¬ 
terminable back-staircase, with only Sam Smithett, our 
darkey servant, and Marina, our woman of all work, to 
look after us, and every day my mother went down to the 
old Princess’ boudoir to work on the copies she was 
making of the exquisite miniatures that poverty was forc¬ 
ing the old lady to sell to the Government. 

I should have been a lonely little boy, no doubt, though 
I might never have suspected it, but for the dried lemon 
with which, one morning, I was playing ball in the smaller 


Julia 


14 

of the two cloistered gardens of the palace. To be brief, 
I chucked my lemon through the open window of Lady 
Ives’ study, and hit, full in one of her twinkling 
black eyes, Mademoiselle Coeur, the small Julia’s gover¬ 
ness. 

This episode won me Julia’s friendship, and Made¬ 
moiselle Coeur’s, the dear woman, and was, incidentally, 
the means of my mother making the acquaintance of Sir 
Charles and his little ladyship, as he used to call her. 

Sir Charles, I believe, had even in those far-off days, 
the robust and unshakable appetite for good food, wine, 
and pretty women, that still preserved for him, in his 
retirement, a dim celebrity, and he himself has told me 
of his immense admiration for my mother, “although” 
he added, more than once, “the dear creature’s name, 
horrible to say, was Martha, instead of Demeter, as it 
should have been.” 

His outspoken admiration—outspoken to the verge of 
tactlessness, according to his own story—annoyed my 
mother intensely, and I remember her relief when the 
pocket Adonis was transferred to Paris. 

. . . Julia and I, that first hour in the quaint old 
Chinese room at King’s Camel, went over those dim, 
bappy days in Home as we had done on every meeting 
subsequent to them—we had met, since her eighth birth- 
day, only a few times—as people do in our circumstances, 
interrupting each other with eager “do you remembers ?” 
and “have you forgottens ?” 

“Poor mamma,” she said at length, “has not to this 
day got over Auntie Martha’s not liking her.” 

“My mother was, in her likes and dislikes, half Mede 
and half Persian, but I think she would have liked Sir 


Julia 15 

Charles, if he had not had such a rainbow-like imagina¬ 
tion.” 

“Dear Poodle,” she mused. 

“How is he ? And—her new ladyship ?” 

“Oh, come, Gray! After all, they have been married 
fourteen years, and you can hardly call Frances new” 

From my one short view of her, I was privately con¬ 
vinced that I could call Frances anything, but I did not 
say so. Instead, I murmured that I remembered that 
the marriage had taken place just after Sandra tried to 
explore the depths of the Canal Grande, and at this Julia 
laughed, looking thoughtfully at me. 

“How very Italian you are growing, Gray,” she said. 

I adore Home, and have lived there entirely by my 
own choice for twenty-six years, and it is odd that her 
remark should have given me, as it undoubtedly did, a 
faint little pang that hurt. 

“Why do you say that?” I asked rather crossly. 

“Because you say, naturally, ‘Canal Grande/ instead of 
the Grand Canal, and diamine, and San Pietro, and so 
on. Besides, Grigetto,” she added with her kind, slow 
smile, “there are your hands!” 

I looked down and saw, on my knees, the pale hands 
of the semi-invalid, the skin just beginning, now in my 
forty-sixth year, to curdle a little at the joints and wrists. 

“They look oldish, and very ugly,” I answered, “but 
—surely I don’t gesticulate?” 

“All the time, my dear,” she said. 

There was a little pause as I gazed round the yellow¬ 
ing white satin hangings on which, in groves of flowers, 
tiny Chinese ladies and gentlemen crossed bridges or par¬ 
took of tea in blossoming bowers. 


Julia 


16 

Then I laughed, catching myself in the act of a shrug 
and a faintly sketched gesture. 

“Well, Giuletta, I suppose you’re right, but in any case 
it is not the Italianized American, but the Italianized 
Englishman, who is ‘indiavolinato,’ and you can’t say my 
clothes are Italian, anyway, for they are all made in Hew 
York!” 

She nodded. “Yes,” she agreed, adding with that sim¬ 
plicity that made many people call her stupid, “You must 
get Humphrey to take you to his man in Grafton Street.” 

“My dear Julia,” I parodied, “how very English you 
are!” 

To my amazement and shame a deep flush sprang up 
her face at my words, and I was about to apologise for 
my clumsy joke, when we were interrupted. 

“How do you do, Mr. McEadden,” an odd, deep voice 
cried from the window at my back; “I am Sandra, the 
family Joy and Pride-” 

I had not seen the girl for four years, and she had in 
the interval grown up as far as she was ever going to 
do it. 

As we shook hands I saw her in one flash, which was 
as she had meant me to see her. 

A small, thin, bustless* girl, with the curious ungainly 
grace of her period, she wore a delightful frock of knitted 
wool the colour of very creamy American coflee, and her 
burnished black hair, short and unwaved, but with its 
ends turned in all round, was like a mediseval cap. 

She was not, I saw, as beautiful as her mother, even 
now, at forty-two, was beautiful, for her pale brown face 
was thin and irregular, and her mouth unusually wide, 
though the small teeth were like blanched almonds put 



Julia 


17 


in upsicfe down, but her eyes, the biggest I can remem¬ 
ber having seen, were of a blazing blue like that of the 
sea to the South of Sicily, in May. Her eyes were, I 
learned, the sky of her stormy, capricious face, and when, 
after a period of sulks or brooding anger, their heavy, 
densely-lashed lids opened suddenly, the effect was ac¬ 
tually like the parting of grey clouds on a brilliant 
sky. 

“Well,” she began, sitting down and crossing her 
shapely legs, with a side glance at her mother, “I sup¬ 
pose you’re going to call me ‘some kid’ ?” 

“I am not. I shall repulse your advances with con¬ 
tumely, though I am, of course, just of the age to rouse 
a passion of affection in you-” 

Julia stared, and I observed that the slight cowlike- 
ness of her stare had outlasted the years. 

“Oh, Gray,” she murmured, a little distressed, and 
Sandra and I burst out laughing. 

The girl shot a quick, understanding glance at her 
mother, and then held out her narrow, brown hand to 
me. 

“Sorry, Mummy,” she cried, using the abominable 
nickname with a sort of grace; “I’ll be good. And, Mr. 
McFadden, I am really glad to see you; and please may 
I call you Grigetto, and will you cast ceremony to the 
hounds and call me Sandruccia, as you used to in Venice ?” 

There are, in the modern novelist’s vocabulary, certain 
worn-out, broken-kneed old words that deserve to be sent 
out to grass, to die in peace; and of these none is more 
exhausted than “charm.” 

Because of this I am loath to use it, but it is the only 
one to express, concisely and without explanations, the 



18 Julia 

quality that made of this twenty-two-year-old girl the 
formidable being she was. 

Had she not bad those amazingly huge eyes—but for 
their size and their colour they were not beautiful—she 
might have been dismissed as plain, but even then that 
charm of hers would have held good. It was a thing un¬ 
analysable and indescribable, but it had us all in leash, 
and this, my powers of description being weak, I must beg 
every one who reads this book to bear in mind, for it 
was the root from which sprang all the events I am going 
to put down. 

As she babbled, that spring day, I noticed that Julia’s 
face slowly filled, like a quiet pool into which some under¬ 
ground spring is welling, with light and happiness. 

What the girl said I cannot remember. Nothing worth 
recording in any case; but she held my middle-aged and 
technical attention, and, seeing Julia’s content, I listened 
with pleasure to the queer, veiled voice as it went on and 
on. 

And as a Chinese Chippendale clock struck six, Sir 
Charles Ives joined us, stepping jauntily across a lawn 
the greenness and delicacy of which I had never seen 
equalled. 

Framed in an open window, whose outline was broken, 
delightfully, with ivy, he advanced just as'he had always 
advanced, as if his own small person in some mysterious 
way, and half, or at least a quarter, unknown to himself, 
constituted a procession. 

He was’ dressed all in grey, his soft hat hung over one 
ear, there was a pheasant-eyed narcissus in his coat, and 
he looked altogether, I thought, as we shook hands, like 
a modern conception of a young god of spring, on whose 


Julia 19 

form some fairy scorned had cast a spell of temporary 
age. 

He was, I knew, to be seventy the next day (the birth¬ 
day festivities were kindly supposed to be augmented in 
some degree by my presence), and yet I swear that, as he 
stepped on to the thickly-padded Chinese matting of the 
room, he might have been forty. 

“Grigetto, mio caro figliuolo,” he cried—he was in¬ 
finitely polyglot, with an invincible British accent to 
which his manner gave, somehow, the air of an added 
grace that he himself would have called “panache”— 
“Welcome to King’s Camel!” 

“Which,” supplemented Sandra, her eyes half-shut, “be¬ 
longs* to Mummy!” 

To my amusement and satisfaction he at once reduced 
her to proper behaviour with a kiss, and an antediluvian 
gesture known, I believe, as a chuck under the chin. 

Then, sitting down in a small carved chair, he gave 
me a resume of his doings since I had met him two years 
ago in the convent at Monreale, near Palermo. 

“It was delightful,” he prattled in his high, pleasant 
voice, “running up against you there by the Saracen 
fountain! Ebbene, my dear, when I came back, my 
cousin, old Salop, got ran American oil king, or something, 
to take Crabbet on long lease, and Vine-Innes let me 
have the most delightful cottage in the whole world, just 
beyond the wood there—you’ll love it—and my lady and 
I have been Darby and loaning it there to our hearts’ 
content.” 

Then he added, beaming in the friendliest way, “It’s 
a pity you and my lady didn’t quite hit it off that time 
in Venice, Gray—she has a really absurd prejudice 


20 Julia 

against Americans. Odd thing, she seems to actually 
loathe ’em!” 

Sandra and I burst out laughing, but Julia looked 
distressed, and the old man blushed like a child who has 
made a social blunder at a party. 

“Never mind, Poodle, darling,” Julia said to him 
gently, “Grigetto never minds anything you say; and 
Frances is sure to like him, and he her, when they get 
to know each other.” 

“Of course, of course,” he agreed in haste, rosy with 
that easy embarrassment of his, adding to Sandra, who 
was still impishly grinning, “your grandmother is a won¬ 
derful woman, Alexandra.” 

“Oh, Lord, ‘Alexandra/ ” she returned, “if you are so 
bent on calling things—meaning me—by their proper 
names, you should say my step-grandmother. These mixed 
relationships,” she went on, turning to me, “make life 
so complicated to us romantic and unsophisticated, young¬ 
sters I” 

Julia had risen, and I watched her slow, graceful move¬ 
ments as she switched on some shaded lights, and opened 
a little pear-wood spinet at the far side of the room. 

“I have found some lovely new old music, Grigetto,” 
she said, as she sat down, “you will adore it.” And I 
did, for it was by Rameau, and some others of his period, 
and full of the melancholy charm that seems to hang 
about the melodies of no longer danced dance music. 

She played well, without much execution but with a 
curious and quite unconscious sense of period, as, I had 
always thought, people might have played when spinets 
were young, and when the lovely dignified dances were 
danced by dipping and gliding men and women whose 


Julia 


21 


shadows followed them on fire- and candle-lit floors. 

Gradually Poodle’s voice died away, and a gentle look 
came into Sandra’s queer, strong-willed, nervous little 
face. 

I was very happy to he there, and tired enough to 
enjoy to the full the comfort of my chintz-covered chair, 
and the spreading warmth of the fire. It was good, now 
in the easy silence, to study Julia’s beautiful face, to 
notice that only a few white threads broke the silky 
smoothness of her plainly parted hair, that though her 
noble eyes were not full of peace, as I could have wished, 
they were, as she watched her daughter, alight with a 
deep happiness and pride. There had been, a few years 
before, a period when the child’s nervous wilfulness and 
queer adamantine obstinacy had distressed her mother, 
but apparently that worry was over now. 

She, Julia, was a tall, large woman with a splendid 
torso, only a little less solid-looking than that of the 
Cnidos Demeter. Her legs were long, and her hands and 
feet, though not small, beautifully shaped. 

As she sat there in a glow of electricity contrived with 
cunning to resemble that of a myriad wax candles, her 
ripe beauty was a magnificent and reposeful sight. 
Stodgy, I had heard an American girl call her once, in 
Venice, and there was no doubt that her honest brain 
worked slowly, but there was a quiet wisdom, I reflected, 
in her large-lidded, dark-grey eyes, and the faint lines 
round her handsome mouth were not without humour. 

“I wish,” I thought, “that Vine-Innes would come in.” 

And presently he did come in. A tall man dressed 
with precision; his scant, mouse-coloured hair varnished 
neatly to his too-small, flat-roofed head. 


Julia 


22 

He was very civil to me—regretting the series of 
chances that had hitherto prevented onr meeting, express¬ 
ing a wish to show me his collection of engravings— 
altogether a most correct host. 

As he stood in front of the fire, chatting to his wife 
and daughter, I studied him more carefully, and found 
that, while his hands and feet were of extreme beauty, 
he was slightly knock-kneed. How it is an odd and in¬ 
defensible thing that while bow-legged men never offend 
even my eyes, knock-kneed ones have always roused a 
kind of dislike in me. Considering that my own right 
leg is three inches shorter than my left one, and that I 
have always been a miserably delicate creature, my feel¬ 
ing of antagonism to my old friend’s husband’s legs was 
absurd, but it was there, and a thing to be reckoned with, 
for I had greatly wished to like him. 

“Very well-bred,” I told myself severely, “and he has 
a decent air of authority, and, I should say, quite enough 
brains for a cavalry man. He looks a clean liver, and 
healthy, and not more masterful than every man has a 
right to look in his own family. Only—damn those 
knees.” 

Later I found that his mouth was very small and rather 
tight, and that his eyes were noticeably small, and of a 
cold soda-water-bottle bluish-green colour. 

[ m ] 

As I dressed I wondered why on earth she had mar¬ 
ried him, but I knew enough to know that this is really 
the secret of the Sphynx, and worse than useless as a 
matter of conjecture. 


Julia 


23 


Sam Smithett, my old darkie servant, who had carried 
Julia on his back, and been kissed by her, (she im¬ 
mensely admired his chocolate colour when she was 
seven), was full of chat as he helped me dress. 

“Miss Julia looks just the same, sir,” he began, 
“couple of sizes bigger than she was that year in Rome, 
but she ain’t changed none. Hot a lady in Italy can 
touch her. Just like a lovely wax lady in a barber’s 
shop.” 

This was a compliment, and I accepted it as such. 
“Have you seen Sir Charles too, Sam ?” 

His charming, friendly old face changed. “Yessir, Sir 
Charles is jis the same spry little gentleman he always 
was, only he’s grown pretty old. Lawdy, Marse Gray,” 
he broke off suddenly to say, “I’m glad we-all ain’t get¬ 
ting old like that!” 

“You and I, Sam, are possessed of eternal youth,” I 
agreed, “besides being of almost supernal beauty.” 

“Yas’r.” He was putting an evening shoe on my bad 
foot, and for a moment gave all his attention to the rather 
difficult job. 

Then, squatting back on his heels, he burst out angrily: 
“But I ain’t going to be called a nigger by nobody— 
pindling, knock-kneed chap himself, too.” 

“Why, who called you that, Sam?” 

“The Colonel. Miss Julia’s husband, sir. I met Sir 
Charles and him on my way upstairs from tea, and after 
they’d gone on I heard the Colonel say, ‘I say, Poodle, 
I wonder what Judd and the other servants’ll say to hav¬ 
ing a nigger about the house V ” 

I explained that the word, so injurious to American 
ears, was harmless enough in England. “I’ve heard 


24 Julia 

English officers refer to East Indians as niggers over and 
over again, Sam, without the least idea of hurting their 
feelings.” 

He rose, humbly tragic, as, to my eyes at least, all 
old negroes are. “Well, Marse Gray,” he said, his liquid 
voice full of mournful music, “I ain’t no Indian. Indians 
in Bakersville! I don’t believe in all that new kinder 
talk we heard in America three years ago, about gentle¬ 
men of colour and all that, but I ain’t no redskin, and 
I do’ want to be called a nigger, though perhaps I am 
one according to the law, and I wish you’d ask Colonel 
Vine-Innes to call me just a coloured man, or a darkie.” 

“I will indeed, old friend,” I assured him; “and now 
give me that flower for my coat, and make me as hand¬ 
some as you can.” 

Vine-Innes took my suggestion with perfect courtesy, 
promising to explain to his butler about the matter, but 
I could see that he was bored by it, and felt that he be¬ 
longed to the vast number of Britons who, on meeting 
an Indian prince in Piccadilly, would tell his family at 
lunch that he had seen a native. 

The dinner was excellent (dispelling my secret fear of 
half-raw mutton, and plain boiled all-the-rest), and the 
heavy old silver and delightful, greenish glass, a joy to 
behold. 

We were alone, except for a fattish youth with a bad 
but rather attractive stammer, whom everybody quite 
openly teased about some one called Eva. 

“She can’t come,” Sandra (obviously lying) assured 
him, “for Poodle’s coming-of-age to-morrow, as she fell 
out of the window yesterday, and broke both her legs.” 

“Oh, I say, Brat,” the young man, who after all was 


Julia 25 

not as young as he looked, murmured. “She is coming, 
Mrs. V-I, isn’t she?” 

Julia inclined her head. “Of course she is, Dicky. 
Sandra, do behave!” 

“Sandra,” Lady Ives declared, in the voice of a herald 
making a royal announcement from a tapestry-hung bal¬ 
cony, “is deteriorating from day to day.” 

“ *Every day and in every way,’ ” Ives quoted with 
his inimitable air of producing a brilliantly original 
thought- 

“ ‘She grows wusser and wusser,’ ” the girl laughed 
gaily as she snatched, so to say, his worm from his very 
beak, and he threw a wet carnation at her. 

Lady Ives, who had grown no older since our infelici¬ 
tous lunch-party at my apartment in Venice, was a tall 
and stiff-moving old woman, but she sat a dining-room 
chair very well, and while distinctly plain, wore her dia¬ 
monds with some splendour. 

Her voice was the deepest I had ever heard in a woman, 
but that, of course, was before I knew Eva Cripps. She 
was well-read, but as obstinate, as her gay little old hus¬ 
band said, as the very devil. 

“Your Mark Twain,” she declared to me towards the 
middle of dinner, “is vulgar and second-rate. His Eng¬ 
lish is appalling, and his ideas of humour those of some 
class of which I have no knowledge.” 

“Oh, come, Ean, there’s the Jumping Erog,” put in 
Ives, always conciliatory, “and in any case he’s not 
McFaddens Mark Twain.” 

“Henry James, now,” she boomed on, completely dis¬ 
regarding him, “is quite a different man. So gentle¬ 
manly.” 



26 Julia 

I agreed that the two writers were slightly dissimilar, 
and Julia came to the rescue by telling me that the old 
Duke had known Thackeray well. 

“He, too, was a gentleman,” commented Lady Ives, 
adding, with the weight and conclusiveness of a steam¬ 
roller: “Dickens was not!” 

“Steppy does add to the joy of nations, doesn’t she, 
Grigetto ?” Sandra asked me in a perfectly audible 
voice. Lady Ives and she were plainly not on good terms, 
and I saw Julia’s serene eyebrows stir uneasily at this 
last remark. 

Vine-Innes said little, but spoke in an ex cathedra way 
when he did, though his manners were perfect. His 
manner, I thought, was not pleasant, yet Julia was evi¬ 
dently satisfied with him. Probably, I reflected, those 
ten years of his in India, when she, unable to stand the 
climate, had stayed in England, might have helped mat¬ 
ters. She had not been devastated by unbroken conjugal 
intimacy; she had had much of the solitude she had al¬ 
ways loved; and—Sandra had been wholly hers. 

The end of dinner became unexpectedly peaceful, for 
to my amazement Lady Ives had, since our first meeting, 
read and liked most of my novels, comparing them fa¬ 
vourably to those of both Henry James (for whose good¬ 
breeding she could not conceal her surprise) and Hardy. 

This discrimination was rather hard to bear under the 
dancing blue of Sandra’s eyes, and Julia’s gentle protest 
that she was afraid, much as she loved my books, she must 
admit that she admired Hardy’s almost more, but I did 
my best to look imposing, and at last we were back in 
the immense, very low, small-windowed drawing-room, the 
only really big room in the house. 


Julia 


27 


With Lady Ives at the helm our ship seemed hound to 
go on the rocks before bedtime, and I, who was extremely 
tired after my long day, was thinking of my bed, and 
good old Sam’s gentle black hands rubbing my leg, when 
all danger fled, Lady Ives became at once not only a 
secondary, but the most willingly secondary of women, 
and really sweet in her manner. 

This odd miracle was achieved in the most unlikely of 
ways: by the to me unexpected arrival of the first Lady 
Ives, “Amber,” whom I had known that first winter in 
Borne, thirty-six years before. 

It seemed to me like a dream that the present Lady 
Ives, grim and dictatorial as she was, could thus be 
transformed into the mildest of lambs by the presence of 
her matrimonial predecessor, and I had the feeling of 
amused resentment known to all novelists when confronted 
by one of human nature’s impossible, but nevertheless 
achieved, freaks. 

“If I put it into a book,” I thought vexedly, “the 
critics would with perfect justice tear me limb from 
limb.” 

Julia had crossed the wavy oak floor to meet her mother, 
and by some chance Sandra and I were alone. 

“Isn’t it rum?” she asked, “just look at Steppy. And 
Poodle will kiss her— Granny, I mean—and she will kiss 
everybody except you and Dicky Fanning, and the dove 
of peace will roost on our roof-tree till she goes again.” 

“Where does she live?” I asked. 

“Bath, of all places. Isn’t she a pet, all made up, and 
so like Lottie Venne?” 

She left me and embraced the tiny old creature whose 
tremendous personality had wrought the miracle. 


28 


Julia 


“Come, Amber,” I heard Ives say, as I made myself 
small in my corner. “There’s an old friend of yours—in 
the chair under the Reynolds. Know him ?” 

Kimbly, like an aged fairy, Julia’s mother tripped over 
the slippery floor, her tiny high-heeled shoes clicking 
sharply, her head on one side. 

“But—why, it’s Grigetto,” she cried in a tone of ex¬ 
quisite pleasure, “little Grigettino! Oh, my dear child, I 
am so glad to see you!” 

I kissed the soft, scented little cheek she held up to 
me, and gradually we settled down again round the fire, 
old Lady Ives with her arm round old Amber, old Poodle 
eyeing them both with the utmost satisfaction. 

“What’s her name?” I whispered to Julia, but I 
could not catch her answer, and resumed my study of 
this curious group. 

“Amber” was, I knew, sixty-seven or -eight, but she 
was dressed in a delightful silvery lime-colour, with a 
rope of fine pearls on her thin but not corrugated neck. 
Her wig was a thing of beauty, and she wore it like a 
crown. It was of a mellow reddish-gold cunningly 
streaked with the whitest of white locks. 

Her make-up was excellent, but had a certain air of 
artlessness that lent it charm, and the vitality of her 
large, dark blue, perfectly unfaded eyes, was astonishing. 

She looked every hour of her nearly seventy years, but 
she looked as if every one of those hours had been so full 
of pleasure and gaiety that she did not regret their im¬ 
mense accumulation. 

“Gray,” she cried, her voice suddenly mournful, like 
a pigeon’s, “your beautiful saint of a mother didn’t like 
me.” 


Julia 29 

“She didn’t know you,” I answered, not I thought un- 
skilfully. 

“She thought I was wicked,” she went on, shaking her 
head, her eyes dark with memory, “and so I was. It is,” 
she continued, quite disregarding the footman who was 
setting down by her a tray containing sandwiches and 
a pint of champagne, “dreadful to think how wicked I 
used to be.” 

“Hush, Mamma!” 

“You were never wicked, Amber,” murmured Lady 
Ives; and Sir Charles added with conviction: 

“God bless my soul, no, Amber—though of course there 
were people who thought you were wrong about Sher¬ 
rington and Captain Darieu, and that Russian chap.” 

Brightly smiling, she filled a glass with wine, the most 
irresponsible-looking woman I had ever seen. “Ah, yes, 
dear Poodle, dear Dmitri; I never could pronounce his 
surname—so foreign you know,” she added to me, and I 
asked myself if she could possibly be as idiotic as, with all 
her fascination, she seemed. 

She ate rapidly, smiling at us in turn (her teeth I re¬ 
membered, and they were still admirable), and then sud¬ 
denly she rose. 

“Oh, Fm so tired,” she cried, “I must go to bed. The 
Prince is, of course, asleep long ago-” 

“The Prince is her husband,” explained Sandra, “her 
third legal one ” 

As I lay in bed, too tired to sleep, I came to the con¬ 
clusion that the Princess was one of the cleverest women I 
had ever met. And she was. 



CHAPTER II 

[ i ] 


H ER story, told to me the next morning in the sunk 
garden, already gay with greenery and minute blue 
and pink flowers, was a tale of wild romance and adven¬ 
ture. 

We sat on a comfortable rustic bench soaked in pale 
lemon-coloured sunshine, while birds called about us, and 
a pellucid, cloudless sky bent, as it seemed to me, used 
to the august height of the Italian heavens, very low over 
us, in a friendly, brooding way, as if she, the wild old 
Princess, and I, the Ohio-Roman novelist, had been small, 
delicate fledglings. 

She wore (her clothes were so integrally a part of her 
that one could never, as in Julia’s case one could, dis¬ 
regard them) a fleecy woollen thing, knitted or crocheted, 
of the most delightful periwinkle blue, and her broad- 
leafed, fawn-coloured hat bore a wreath of those most 
romantic flowers. Perfect. 

“Let me see, Gray,” she began, cooing as she had, in 
vain, cooed to my mother all those years ago, “you don’t 
know a thing about me, do you ?” 

I did, of course, for since I had seen her I had seen 
Julia four times, and the very articulate Poodle about 
a dozen, but I answered according to her wish, and said 
“No.” 

“My dear boy,” she went on, plainly delighted, tucking 
30 


Julia 31 

a green linen cushion between the hack of the bench and 
her nobility, “it will take ages to tell you!” 

“So much the better, dear Princess.” 

Daylight is crueler than shaded electricity, and I must 
confess that her old face was rather terrifying in the 
morning sun. Plainly, too plainly, I saw the patina of 
cream-coloured stuff, and then the pencilling round the 
eyes, still, under their ravaged and wrinkled lids, so in¬ 
tensely blue; the black on the diminished lashes; the pink 
that filled the pores of the soft old cheeks; and the crim¬ 
son grease on the faded, crumpled lips. 

I could have wished for less clear eyes, and yet, as she 
went on talking, I forgot everything but the intense, emo¬ 
tional story she was flooding me with. 

“Poodle,” she began, “always was the greatest dear in 
the world, but I was never, even when he was quite young, 
really in love with him. Your mother knew this, I think, 
by the way. He was always dear, though such a goose, 
but oh, my dear boy, so weak! About women, I mean. 
You may say I was weak about men—of course, in the 
long run. I did (and there’s not a bit of use in denying 
it), I did fall in love several times, but the difference was 
—as I give you the credit of being clever enough to under¬ 
stand !—that I was strong and not weak. I wanted a man 
worth loving, and as I didn’t find him at once, I kept on 
looking for him. If/* she added pensively, “you ever put 
me into a book, you might call it ‘Seeking,’ or ‘The 
Search,’ for that is what it was. 

“Sherrington had the most fascinating nose in the 
world, and oh, my dear boy, how he did sing ‘Songs of 
Araby’! I assure you, Gray, that I had every intention 
of marrying Ossie (that was his name, Oswald), and yet, 


Julia 


32 

when dear Poodle had divorced roe, I—just couldn’t. I’d 
had ‘Enough’ of poor sweet Ossie, so I couldn’t possibly 
sit down to ‘a Eeast’ with him.” 

“Rather hard on him?” I suggested, fascinated in a 
way that I despair of communicating to the most intelli¬ 
gent, even, of readers. 

“Oh, very. Quite suicidal he was for a time. His 
sister came to see me,” she returned, “and we had a really 
most painful scene. (He married that American, Mrs. 
Sheffield, whose pearls were stolen in Cairo—do you re¬ 
member ? Everybody thought she had given them to him 
■—the Arab, or something. I forget.) At all events, I 
felt that, feeling as I did, it would be practically adultery 
for me to marry him, and I—didn’t. I have,” she added, 
almost religiously, “always regarded adultery, unless it 
was absolutely unavoidable, as very wrong.” 

A lark was spinning a thin thread of song over our 
heads as she spoke, and I gazed up at him in silence. The 
most hardened novelist has these moments! 

“I lived very quietly for a year after that—in a pension 
in Florence, as a matter of fact. Dreadful, it was, like 
a Home for Decayed Gentlewomen, and such cats. Then, 
one day in the TJffizi I met Andre Dareiu. He was a cap¬ 
tain in the French Havy, and he adored me. He had a 
broken nose, but was otherwise very handsome. We were 
married in Siena. We parted,” she added, after a longish 
pause, “in Venice, which is, after all, the best place in 
the world for partings. Ho bitterness, you know, and 
with—well, esteem. Only”—again, as the lark dropped 
like a pebble into his nest, she paused—“the truth is, 
we were what Sandra would call fed up with each other. 
Vulgar, but expressive.” 


Julia 


33 


“Very,” I returned. 

“Fm so glad you agree with me. Well, after that I 
went to China, such a pretty country, and every one so 
glad to have one as a guest. The Fleet was there, and 
we went to Japan—overrated, I call ’em, all knock-kneed, 
and I hate knock-kneed people-” 

At this I jumped, and she burst out laughing, the paint 
on her face curdling. “So,” she commented, “you have 
noticed? H’m! Well, I wandered about there, looking 
at temples and things, and buying little ivory boxes, and 
crepe de Chine, and so on, and then I went to India. 
Charles was, I must say, charming to me—though he was 
shocked nearly out of his skin by poor Sherry and Andre 
—and I behaved like an angel then—naturally, for Julia’s 
sake. Sandra was only two at the time—or three, my 
memory is a perfect wreck !—and then Ju and Sandra 
and I came home, and the Duke gave her this place and 
we settled down. He is an abandoned old ruffian, but oh, 
mio caro Grigetto, he is attractive. (Was, I mean.) Just 
to you and that sentimental bird, and the daffodils, I don’t 
mind admitting that I did all I knew to make him ask me 
to marry him. But he wouldn’t.” 

Her thin little face, so curiously luminous for all its 
paint, became all of a sudden solemn as a sunrise at sea: 
“He told me that but for poor Sherry and Andre he would 
have ‘made me his Duchess’—(he loathes divorce like so 
many really wicked Englishmen!)—isn’t it a heavenly 
phrase?—but that, as things were, he couldn’t go so far, 
and he was too fond of me to suggest, well—a shorter 
journey. I was,” she added with a very sweet smile of 
reminiscence, ‘not even fifty then, and of course I was 
attractive-” 




Julia 


34 

And I knew that she believed the forties, even those late 
forties so hard for many women to bear, to be youth. 

“Who,” I asked, as she took a cigarette from a heavy 
enamelled case, “was the Russian V 9 

There was a little pause while she got her cigarette 
into action, and then, holding it between her third and 
fourth fingers, she answered with a kind of butterfly 
gravity: “He was a big, plain man with an under-hanging 
jaw, and small, far apart eyes. We met in Paris, and— 
I thought I had found what I had always been looking for. 
We did not marry, you understand, because I thought that 
no woman ought to marry more than twice, unless she is 
a widow. It doesn’t seem right, somehow. But we were 
very happy for a long time, over three years it was.” 

“That is a great thing,” I answered. 

“Yes. We went to Russia, to his queer, huge wooden 
bouse like dozens of bungalows grown together. It was 
in the Eastern part of Russia and very Oriental in some 
ways. . . . The river was wonderful, as brown and smooth 
looking as chocolate, and so broad! I liked the winter, 
and driving in sledges, and the bells on the harness . . .” 
She closed her eyes and smiled. “I can see and hear it 
all now. Yes, and smell it. Russia smells quite different 
from England, even in the country- 99 

“Perhaps,” I suggested, “you might have done well to 
marry him V 9 

“Qu’a Dieu ne plaise!” She was all a-glitter in a 
second. “Ho, no. I loved him in a way, but after the 
very first, I knew it wasn’t the real way. Ah, Gray,” 
she burst out emotionally, “no one knows whether it is 
not love until the blinding, deafening, physical passion 



35 


Julia 

has—boiled away. That’s what you young people never 
will believe, and it is the truest thing in this world.” 

“But what would you suggest ?”1 said. a The ten years’ 
trial-trip ?” 

She rose, shaking her pretty skirts as a humming-bird 
shakes its plumage. “Ah no, my dear, I never suggest. 
I don’t think I have ever in my life suggested anything 
to anybody. Look—that little blue flower has come out 
since we began talking!” 

“A compliment to your eloquence, Princess-” 

She took my arm and steered me gently towards the 
house. 

“Ah yes, ‘Princess.’ That reminds me that you have 
not yet seen Muzio. Prince di Scarletta, that’s his name. 
He is thirteen years younger than I, and a Sicilian, and 
I met him in the Greek theatre at Syracuse, and—well, 
you’ll see. He’s sure to be back now.” 

“Back?” 

“Yes. He gets up at five—all Sicilians get up early, 
because it’s so hot they sleep in the middle of the day— 
and he always rides for two hours before lunch. He is a 

dear—you’ll see- Ah,” she broke off, with a little 

cry of pleasure, “there he is!” 

He came strolling down the path towards us, a tall, 
stout man, looking about fifty, a Panama hat in his hand, 
his curly, iron-grey hair glistening in the sun. 

He kissed his wife’s little wrinkled hand, and then 
gripped my hand cordially, his sherry-coloured eyes 
friendly and kind, and I liked him at once, as I am 
always inclined to like Sicilians. 

He was plainly in love with his wife, and thoroughly 




36 Julia 

in her thrall, and as we walked on I reflected on the 
injustice of things, in this world at least. 

Here was this woman who had broken all conventional 
laws, married and unmarried, who had had, according 
to her own unembarrassed account, several lovers, safely 
come to harbour in her old age with a romantic and ador¬ 
ing husband, the friendship of her first husband, the love 
and admiration of all her tribe, and her own unshaken 
self-respect. 

It delighted me, it entertained me vastly, to listen to 
the polyglot chatter of the two (though Scarletta, who was 
passionately attached to the English language, usually 
expressed himself in it), and I remember thinking 
casually that I must sometime put them into the alembic 
that is even the humblest scribbler’s subconscious brain, 
and make a story of them. 

Presently I heard the Princess ask her husband the 
time—in Italian. 

“Nearly twelve, my soul,” he returned in English, “and 
the Poodles will be coming!—” 

I knew that the official presentation to Ives, from the 
combined family, of his birthday present, was to take 
place at lunch-time and asked her what the present was 
to be. 

“Ho idea, my dear, nor has Muzio. Sandra is in charge 
of the matter, and I’ve hardly seen her so far-” 

“Nor I,” put in the Prince. “She cashed all our 
cheques, and went up to London to choose something, that’s 
all I know. By the way, Ambra,” he went on, “did you 
know that Eva Creeps is coming?” 

“ ‘Eva Creeps,’ ” I cried, “can there be such a name V 9 

“He means Cripps, Grigetto; he always calls her 



Julia 37 

Creeps. She is Frances’s cousin’s daughter, a large raw- 
boned woman-” 

Scarletta hurst out laughing, showing large but very 
white teeth. “Ah,” he commented roguishly, as he bent 
and kissed his wife’s cheek, “all alike, these dear ladies!” 

“Antediluvian,” she called him, placably, adding to me, 
“but you will see, Grigetto—a flat-waisted woman, with 
a voice like a fog-horn.” 

Julia, dressed in white, with a big, old-fashioned garden 
hat on, was in the hall, filling with flowers the last of what 
to me seemed a vast number of vases that a young foot¬ 
man carried away in relays on a big tray. 

She looked pale and, I thought, uneasy in some way, 
and I noticed that the Princess shot a very comprehensive 
glance at her as we came in. 

“Where,” the old lady asked, “is Sandra ?” 

“Out.” Julia bit her lip as if she had meant to say 
more, and then decided not to. 

“Being tiresome, is she, the monkey 1” 

“Put this lovely rose in your dress, Mamma, and here 
are buttonholes for Muzio and Gray—oh, I see Muzio 
already has one!” Have I said that the Prince was lav¬ 
ishly buttonholed ? 

“Thanks, my dear. And so she is being tiresome ?” the 
Princess persisted, rather to my regret. 

Julia smiled not very mirthfully. “It is only that she 
will not tell me what present she chose for papa. You 
know she begged to be allowed to go up to town to buy it, 
and Humphrey let her, and so far not a thing has come 
by post, and she told me she had not brought it with her, 
and-” 

“And you’re worried lest it shan’t come before lunch. 



38 


Julia 

Well,” concluded the Princess philosophically, “I know 
Poodle pretty well—or I used to!—and I’m sure he won’t 
mind if there’s a delay-” 

Julia dried her hands on her handkerchief and sat 
down in a square of crimson light from one of the splendid 
windows. “Dear Mamma,” she said gently, “let’s not talk 
about it. Of course, Papa wouldn’t mind a delay, but— 
she is behaving so very oddly, and refuses to tell me one 
thing, and—well, you know how I always worry-” 

“When she goes through her tricks and manners, yes,” 
commented the old lady. “I do know. Ah,” she added, 
glancing up at the shallow, branching staircase, “here 
you are, Minx.” 

“Good morning, Granny; good morning, Nonnino; how 
are you, Gray ?-” 

Pausing there, framed by the shining dark wood, one 
pretty foot pointed as if she were doing positions in some 
old dance, she made a charming picture. 

“What did you choose for your grandfather’s birth¬ 
day?” the Princess asked artlessly. 

Sandra, still pointing her toe, pointed a finger at her. 
“Oh,” she jeered, “did you? Ebbene, Principessa bella, 
you can't. Nobody knows but me— Oh, yes, one other 
person—but I assure you Poodle will be as pleased as a 
dog with two tails with it.” 

“Haven’t you told your mother?” asked Scarletta 
mildly. “After everything, you must remember we all 
helped to buy it.” 

To my surprise, after a grin at him, her face hardened 
indescribably as she turned to Julia. 

“At a quarter past one,” she said, “it will be in the 
chintz-room, and you can all bring him in to see it.” 





Julia 


39 


“Why the chintz-room ?” asked the Prince. 

“Just because; that’s why.” 

She went quickly across the hall and disappeared, leav¬ 
ing us all a little uncomfortable. How any one could be 
antagonistic to Julia Yine-Innes, I could not understand, 
but that her own daughter should so plainly show a mood 
more resembling dislike than anything else, puzzled me 
completely, while Julia’s look of dumb misery seemed, 
though natural in kind, almost absurdly exaggerated in 
intensity. 

When she had gone quietly upstairs I turned to the 
Princess and asked her if I were an old enough friend to 
be allowed to enquire what the matter was. 

“You are,” she returned promptly. “Let’s go to the 
chintz-room—it has two big French windows there, so it’s 
sunny—and I’ll tell you. Julia never will, and you may 
be able to help her, for it’s plain that the—the Brat— 
likes you.” 

She led the way down a long passage like a bent arm, 
and at its elbow opened a door, and the Prince and I 
followed her bird-like progress to where the sun lay warm 
on the delightful old French carpet. 

“The Brat is not at all a bad brat, you know,” Scarletta 
began, manlike, and she laughed at him. 

“She flirts with you, and of course you enjoy it. Also, 
she is by far the most physically attractive, bar me, of the 
whole tribe. Men fall in love with her by shoals and 
flocks, as they used to with me. Women don’t like her, 
and that is where her cleverness fails; a woman who hasn’t 
the wisdom of making other women like her always comes 
to grief. Women,” she went on with splendid candour, 


Julia 


40 

“always liked me, and hence—well,” with a wave of her 
little hand, “my good-fortune.” 

“I quite see,” I murmured, nodding, “but I don’t under¬ 
stand why she is so—so queer with Julia. Julia adores 
her, and yet-” 

“Julia,” resumed the old lady placidly, “is a fool. She 
spoils Humphrey, and from the day Sandra was horn she 
has been her slave. I mean Julia has been Sandra’s. And 
slaves can’t be, unless there are slave-owners, or drivers, 
or whatever one calls ’em. Sandra is a slave-driver. She 
does precisely what she wants quite ruthlessly, and then 
she gets into scrapes and subconsciously blames her mother 
for it. I don’t suppose she knows she blames Julia, but 
because Julia has not taught her wisdom, she is being 
punished for it.” 

“Who, Sandra or Julia?” I cried, rather bewildered, 
owing to the poverty of our language. 

Scarletta laughed. “Giulia,” he answered, pronouncing 
the name in the beautiful Italian way. “But it is only 
fair, Ambra, to tell Signor McPadden about the child’s 
health.” 

The word “snort,” as applied to a most exquisite old 
lady, seems gross and out of scale, but it is the only one 
to express the sudden sound emitted by the Princess as 
her husband spoke. 

“Health, indeed! She’s hysterical and neurotic; bad 
nerves, and no wish to bear things. Mind you, when 
she’s good I love her dearly, but her trick of getting her 
own way by becoming ill, makes my blood boil!” 

“By becoming ill?” I asked. 

She nodded. “Yes. She goes to bed, stops eating, 
and, as true as you are sitting in that chair, Gray Me- 



Julia 


41 


Fadden,” she concluded, immensely impressive as tiny 
women so often are, “she can actually run up a temper¬ 
ature, and become disquietingly ill, when she wants to!” 

“Dear me, a conceivably useful gift.” 

“Very. Specialists have told poor Julia that the child 
must have absolute peace of mind, no worries of any kind 
—you know their ridiculous jargon. Sir James Brickett 
told me— me, mind you!—that her nervous system was of 
such extremely delicate equilibrium that unless she was 
allowed to go to Madeira with the Hares, he would not 
he responsible for the consequences.” 

“And what did you say?” 

“What she said,” answered the Prince, pulling with 
both hands at his ram’s horn moustaches, “is one of my 
most miserable memories. Spare me, my dear McFad- 
den.” 

So I spared him, but learned that the usefully consti¬ 
tuted maiden had gone to Madeira with the Hares and 
remained perfectly well until, six months later, she wanted 
an automobile of her own, and the great Harley Street 
nerve specialist, called by telegram, instantly prescribed 
one for her. 

“If she were a mediaeval nun,” the Princess added, 
lighting one of her tiny Russian cigarettes, “she would 
certainly produce Stigmata and become a saint. Bag - 
gager 

I confess that I was a little shocked, not only by the 
baggage’s baggagity, but by my dear Julia’s unwisdom. 

“I can’t understand,” I said, unwillingly, but unable 
to help saying it. “Julia’s spoiling her so. So bad for 
the child herself.” 

“You become bromidical, my poor Grigetto. That is 


42 


Julia 


what every one has said, and it, like most bromides, is 
not particularly true. For instance, so far as I can see, 
Sandra will always have her own way—which is a pleas¬ 
ant thing, and most certainly no worse for people than 
thwarting, which warps and embitters—but poor Julia 
suffers, and, unless I am mistaken, will suffer much more 
through her child’s absolutely inhuman selfishness. San¬ 
dra is twenty-two now, and has already had several love 
affairs; I sometimes tremble when I think of what will 
happen if she ever wishes to marry some bounder, or 
some man who drinks or—or plays the mandoline, for 
nothing on God’s earth can stop her.” She had forgotten 
to dissemble her wisdom, and it struck deep into my mind, 
but before I had to answer, Ives and his wife appeared 
on the lawn, making their way to the drawing-room win¬ 
dow, and we went to join them and salute the day’s hero. 

His frosty curls which, in their jet black days, had 
earned for him his nickname, glittered as he stood bare¬ 
headed, kissing his first wife’s hand. 

He looked excited and a little self-conscious, really like 
a Birthday Child, and showed us with pride the beautiful 
pearl and platinum dress watch-chain his Frances had 
given him. “Let’s go in to Julia,” he exclaimed, “it’s 
very late—the tenants came and gave me a handsome 
silver tray, and made speeches and things—and I want 
to see her and Sandra before Salop and the rest come.” 

“He’s really dying to see the birthday present we are 
all giving him,” the Princess declared, taking Lady Ives’ 
arm and leading the way over the tapestry-like grass. 


Julia 


43 


[ ii ] 

We sat in the queer, low drawing-room that, in its 
eternal duskiness, and the faint light of its tiny, deepset 
windows, reminded me of the cabin of some old sailing 
ship, until Sandra, who had, so far as I knew, not seen 
her mother since they parted in the hall, sent the butler 
to ask us to come to the chintz-room. 

Poor Hobson, I could see, was struggling with what 
to him must have seemed an almost indecently ill-timed 
fit of laughter; his face was red, and his eyes glared with 
the effort to maintain his usual manner. 

“I was to say, sir,” he added, to Poodle, “that the— 
h’m —the present is very small, but that Miss Sandra 
thinks it will”—here he nearly burst—“look well on your 
watch-chain, sir.” 

He rushed out of the room, and the seven of us fol¬ 
lowed close on his heels. 

The chintz-room was small, and hung and draped with 
a most beautiful old chintz chiefly of a faded rose-pink; 
the two big windows were wide open, the air full of sun¬ 
shine and the scent of flowers, and in the middle of the 
floor, blazing white with excitement, was Sandra, sitting 
on a magnificent black horse. 

I shall never as long as I live forget the scene, nor 
the way the indignant animal pranced with rage at the 
roar of laughter with which he was greeted by all of us 
but Julia. 

How the minx had coaxed him in through the window, 
and across the soft carpet, I could never understand, but 
done it she had, and presently she slid to the floor, handed 


44 


Julia 


the bridle to her grandfather and said: “He will look 
sweet on your watch-chain, Poodle, my heart.” 

Ives was delighted, for the horse was, they told me, 
a fine animal, and the scene was a pleasant one, though 
so unusual. 

She sent us out of the room before leading the horse 
back to his stable (kindly allowing Ives to stay), and 
half an hour later we were seated comfortably at lunch, 
the party having been increased by the Duke of Salop 
and Mrs. Eva Creeps, as Scarletta called her. 


CHAPTER III 

[ i ] 


rpHIS book is not a novel, though my being a novelist 
forces me to present its story more or less in my own 
medium. 

I say more or less, advisedly, for the amount of detail 
I have been obliged to put into these first chapters, their 
great length, and the comparative brevity of the chapters 
following what is in reality the beginning of Julia Vine- 
Innes’ story—our journey to Paris—deprives the book 
of the conventionality of shape to which I have conformed 
in some twenty fictional works. 

And one more thing must be borne in mind: the fact, 
not so much that I had since my childhood known most 
of the people connected with Julia’s life, but that they 
had known me, combined with my semi-invalidism, at 
once put me into a very odd position with these various 
people of whom I write. 

I had not contemplated such a position, and at first 
it rather irked me, but when events began to happen in 
connection with King’s Camel, there was hardly any one 
of the actors and onlookers in the drama who did not 
seem to regard me as a kind of natural safety-valve or 
confidant. And this of course enables me to tell my story 
from a variety of view-points. Even Vine-Innes, chilly 
man, talked to me more than once with what I realised 
was for him quite unusual openness. 

Beyond this odd position of mine, and my deep love 
45 


Julia 


46 

for Julia, I had, I might as well say at once, nothing to 
do with the story. It was rather as if I had been dropped 
from my place, as spectator, in the stage-box, to be told 
what every one of the actors thought not only of his or her 
individual role, but of all the other roles, and the way 
in which their representatives were carrying them out. 

I did not like all those people who trusted me, whether 
they liked me or not, but lonely men and women are 
grateful for even fleeting intimacies (my experience has 
been that the most acute and generous intimacies are not 
infrequently fleeting), and my love for Julia (I had never 
been in love with her, of course) had always been the 
sweetest and warmest thing in my life. 

So I took it all as it came, and those silvery spring 
days before we went to Paris were to me very happy 
ones. 

And now we have come to Old Salop, as they all, with 
the family passion for nicknames, called the ancient Duke 
of Shropshire, who seemed to be the uncle or great-uncle 
of the whole tribe. 

I met him that first evening, at dinner; an old man 
whose life for over half a century had been a lively part 
of the scandal-chronicle of Europe and parts of Asia. 

He was a smallish man, but he had not, as the very old 
often seem to have done, grown too small for his skin, 
and all that one could see of him, even the back of his 
neck, was like old ivory, polished and opaque, while his 
dark prominent eyes, still clear, though milky at the edge 
of the iris, held a faint sparkle of mischief. 

He was completely bald, and wore a moleskin-coloured 
velvet cap around which was artlessly attached a little 
fringe of somebody else’s hair, white as frost. 


Julia 


47 

He spoke clearly and to the point, with none of the 
painful hesitations and repetitions that so often make 
association with the very old a thing hard to hear. 

He appeared, I noticed, to subsist on apples, which he 
cut into small cubes with a gold fruit knife, and water. 

“Your gluttony, my dear Eva,” he remarked towards 
the middle of dinner, to Mrs. Cripps, who sat near him, 
“will shorten your life.” 

She laughed sepulchrally as she lounged in a queer and 
very ungraceful way in her chair. “Sour grapes, Uncle 
Salop?” 

The old man—he was eighty-eight, I knew—shook his 
head. “Ho, my dear, I am content, very content with 
my life, and, as I have always said, I mean to live till 
I am a hundred. As to food—and other things”—he 
smiled, his still firm lips curving subtly—“for sixty years 
I treated myself very generously, very generously indeed. 
Then, on my sixtieth birthday, I renounced several things, 
red meat and alcohol amongst ’em, and—in general, ‘over 
— anything* And now, at nearly ninety, I can still go 
for a ride every day, and eat my evening apple in the 
society of fair women and brave men, instead of being 
fed on pap with a spoon somewhere in the background, 
and being a nuisance to everybody.” 

Mrs. Cripps laughed again. “You are a very wise 
old gentleman, Uncle Salop,” she boomed softly, with the 
slowest drawl I have ever heard in my life, “and I have 
every intention of following your example —when I am 
sixty !” 

She was, I decided, in the middle thirties, and as I 
watched the expression of Tanning’s rosy face I mar¬ 
velled, for she was not merely, like the classic chimpanzee, 


48 Julia 

plain, she was to my Romanized eyes positively ugly. 
Even her hair, a greenish yellow, and flat if not actually 
scant, was ugly, and her broad sallow face, with its flat- 
tish nose and thick lips, was redeemed only in a very 
small degree by the bright greenness of her eyes. 

Presently Julia, between whom and the Princess I was 
sitting, turned to me. “Grigetto,” she said, “what are 
you thinking about?” 

“Mrs. Creeps.” 

“I thought so. Do you admire her?” 

“Mio Dio, no.” 

“Do you know who she is?” 

“Never heard of her before.” 

Amid a sudden outburst of general laughter we were 
practically alone, and she answered the question I had 
looked. “She was Mrs. Archie Beamington—the one who 
ran away with Lord Freddy Caithness.” 

“Good Lord, Julia,” I cried, for I knew Caithness, 
“why, she’s as plain as a pikestaff!” 

She nodded. “I know. Every one says that—at first. 
But it was her,” she went on, serenely ungrammatical as 
ever, “and, what’s more—you remember that he went to 
the West Coast after elephants, instead of marrying her ? 
Well! Now that he’s married some one else, he’s fallen 
in love with Eva all over again, and she has the most 
awful time with him.” 

“You’re funny people,” I commented. “We shouldn’t 
have stood for her in America. . . .” 

“No, I know you wouldn’t; but you see her mother 
was Frances’ cousin, and then, of course, The Aunts stood 
by her--” 


Julia 


49 


“Who are The Aunts ?” 

“Dukie’s grand-daughters”—she gave these august la¬ 
dies their names, adding that one of them, Auntie Gior- 
giana, was lady-in-waiting to the Queen. 

“But I never knew,” I answered in surprise, “that the 
Duke was married!” 

She laughed, her pretty, gentle laugh that seemed so 
to express her calm nature. “Oh dear me, yes, Gray. 
He married in ’54, when he was twenty-four, and she, 
the Duchess, died when old Aunt Giorgiana was horn. 
Aunt Augusta died ages ago, unmarried, hut Auntie 
Louisa married a Mr. Domville-Charlesford, of Essex, 
and they had two daughters—this Auntie Giorgiana, and 
Auntie Clarissa—Lady Maccleshorough. See?” 

“Oh, yes,” I murmured, quite unable to digest the 
facts. “So they ‘stood by,’ did they?” 

“Of course, Gray. Poor Eva, she was very unfortu¬ 
nate.” 

I was completely puzzled, knowing the old-fashioned 
standards hy which Julia, even as a very young girl, 
had lived, hy her serenity in connection with such a 
flagrant, unmitigated shindy as Mrs. Beamington’s elope¬ 
ment had heen. 

“Do you believe in—in such doings, Julia ?” I asked. 

She shook her beautiful head ardently. “Oh, no. Gray, 
of course not. It was a terrible scandal-” 

“And,” I interrupted drily, “something of a sin, as 
well?” 

“Naturally. Poor Erances was awfully upset about 
it, and so was Poodle, hut—one can’t give up one’s own 
flesh and blood, and besides,” she added simply, “the 


50 


Julia 


Queen was anxious that it should he smoothed over as 
much as possible. Freddy’s mother is one of her dearest 
friends, you know. . . 

No, I knew nothing, I could know nothing of the 
ethics of this strangest, most impossible of tribes, the 
British aristocracy. I knew Italy fairly well, and was 
not a prig, but every plant, however coaxed and trimmed, 
must remain true to its own roots, and my roots were, 
and are, Bakersville, Ohio. 

There had been, I remembered, no visible excuse for 
Eva Beamington, for Beamington was a decent fellow, 
good to her in every way, and I was half-vexed, half- 
amused to find myself wishing that Julia was less easy¬ 
going about her. 

Julia, as I thought these middle-aged, middle-class 
thoughts, went on with her dinner, unruffled and beauti¬ 
ful, but presently, noticing my abstraction, she said 
quietly: “I suppose we must seem very strange to the 
American part of you, Gray?” 

“I am all American,” I retorted, suddenly savage, add¬ 
ing with a laugh, as her eyes grew troubled, “you are all 
so unlike dear Anthony Trollope. . . .” 

Presently I learned from the Princess that the nice- 
looking boy next Sandra was named Godfrey Lavington, 
and that his right hand was “made of papier-mache or 
something,” its original having been left at Ypres. 

“He looks to me like a wooer,” I observed. 

“He is. Mad about her, and he has such a nice place, 
about twelve miles from here.” 

I looked at the two young faces. “Is she going to ac¬ 
cept him?” 

The Princess, all a-glitter with gold fish-scales and dia- 


Julia 


51 

monds, gave a sincere little sigh. “Ah, ray dear, if I 
could tell you that. But one never knows about San¬ 
dra. . . 

A moment later I was able to ask Julia what she 
thought of young Lavington’s chances, and then I was 
sorry I had asked. 

“Oh, Gray,” she answered, her eyes troubled. “I don’t 
know. She is hard to understand. . . 

Her sigh was very different from her mother’s ; it was 
slow and painful, and seemed to have come from the very 
depths of her being. 

“She is a fascinating child, Julia. . . 

“Yes, she is fascinating, and she is- Oh, Gray,” 

she suddenly burst out, “it is so good to have you here. 
I can talk to you and tell you things. You see I am so 
slow in some ways—I suppose I’m stupid—and she has 
grown up so fast—I am dreadfully puzzled at times . . 

“I see, Julia,” I answered gently. 

“She is the dearest child in the world,” she continued, 
a frown on her smooth brow, “and she does love me—she 
does indeed, Gray, whatever Frances- I mean, no¬ 

body can know my child as I do, and yet . . 

Again she paused, and again I waited, knowing that 
only her own words could help her. 

“You see, Grigetto,” she went on, as Mrs. Cripps 
ended a funny story and every one shouted with laugh¬ 
ter, “there’s no denying that we are a queer family—we 
Iveses, I mean, for the Vine-Innes’ people are all very 
proper-” 

“Any one been doubting your propriety, Julia?” I 
could not forbear saying, hut she did not laugh. 

“Just consider Dukie,” she resumed, disregarding my 





Julia 


52 

interruption, “and darling Poodle, too. And then,” she 
added with a lighter sigh, “we mustn’t forget dear 
Mamma.” 

“Oh, no,” I agreed hastily, “we can’t possibly forget 
her” 

“Quite so. Grandmamma Ives was a saint, of course. 
Poodle can remember her teaching him his prayers, and 
he still has her hair in a ring—he never wears the ring, 
but he has kept it—and Prances is very serious, too.” 

“But what on earth,” I burst out, “can her step-grand¬ 
mother have to do with Sandra’s character?” 

“Oh, well, she is a cousin as well as a step-grandmother. 
She and Poodle are first cousins, you know—so you 


I did not see. It was all a muddle to me, and I thor¬ 
oughly disapproved of even old cousins marrying, but I 
nodded, answering, “Then let us hope that she has in¬ 
herited some of her present ladyship’s austerity.” 

“If only she had, or even of my dulness. Dulness is a 
great safeguard to a woman. The trouble is that there 
seems to be no juste milieu among us, Gray. We are all 

either like me, or—well—you know-” 

“Like the darling Princess or dear Poodle,” I agreed 
with gravity. One could say these things to Julia, for 
she never or rarely understood them, and it was on occa¬ 
sions a relief to one’s mind. 

She nodded and with the little pang I always felt after 
indulging in this outlet, I went on: “I quite understand, 
dear Julia; the child hasn’t yet grown her feathers and 
you can’t quite classify her.” 

“I—I am afraid to try, sometimes,” she returned, very 




Julia 53 

low. Then she turned away from me and we had no 
more private talk. 

The rest of the dinner was merry and rather noisy, as 
only an English party, I have discovered, can be with¬ 
out being terrifyingly shrill and loud. We drank toasts 
—Ives’s and the Duke’s—and then, as an afterthought, 
the ladies’. Vine-Innes made a surprisingly good, concise 
speech in honour of the Birthday Child, and Ives’s reply, 
to my as great amazement, was halting, repetitive and dull. 
“Poor Poodle never could speak in public,” commented 
the Princess to me, “diplomatists never can.” 

It was later in the evening that Julia and I had an¬ 
other talk, and she told me of Sandra’s strange delicacy. 
I did not say, of course, that the Princess had already 
given me her version of the phenomenon, and we talked 
together for a long time, there in our comer. She would 
not listen to the words neurotic or hysterical, rebuffing 
them as if they frightened her—as indeed they might. 

Ho, Sandra was not hysterical, not neurotic; highly- 
strung was the label that she clung to. 

“She has always been very highly-strung,” she repeated 
over and over again. 

“She will get over it,” I repeated as often, adding 
finally, “and self-control will help her more than any¬ 
thing else.” 

Julia looked at me, her grey eyes troubled. “The odd 
thing is, Grigetto,” she confessed, “that she has abso¬ 
lutely phenomenal self-control —when she wants to ” 

She had no idea that this was a capital admission, but 
it of course was. 

“You’ve spoilt her,” I declared brutally, “and the 


54 Julia 

sooner some one—or something—nnspoils her, the better 
for everybody.” 

“I wish she’d marry Godfrey,” was her unresentful 
reply. “He is so good, so steady . . .” 

“But she isn’t in love with him.” 

For a moment she did not answer, and I sat gazing 
round the vast, low room with its beautiful carved pan¬ 
els, its cabinets full of treasures at which no one ever 
seemed to look, the fire on the great hearth, and the 
groups of good-looking, well-dressed, self-satisfied people 
scattered about, as isolated as they might have been in a 
garden. 

Sandra was flirting with her ancient great uncle or 
cousin—I never managed to disentangle the intricate re¬ 
lationships of the tribe; the Princess was flirting with 
her enraptured husband; Vines-Innes was talking to 
young Lavington, both of them showing their boredom to 
an extent impossible to Latins; and on the chill, moonlit, 
flagged path outside the front windows Mrs. Cripps trailed 
her long, awkward body up and down, up and down, Fan¬ 
ning beside her. 

There was something Oriental in her flat-nosed, full¬ 
lipped face, I decided—or was it negroid ? And then, as 
she smiled on her victim as she had not smiled during 
dinner, it struck me that she looked rather like a shark. 
Words, words, words! I have described what reads like 
a monster, and yet I had to admit, as I watched the 
woman, that she had beyond a doubt a good deal of the 
primitive siren in her. 

“Poor Dicky,” Julia sighed; “it is too bad of Eva.” 

“A wicked woman,” I agreed, trying to speak lightly. 

“Oh, no, not wicked, Gray. It’s just that she can’t 


Julia 55 

live without having some one in love with her, and she 
doesn’t realise how they suffer ...” 

“Julia,” I asked her suddenly, “have you ever been in 
love f” 

“Why, Gray!” 

“Yes, I know, but—have you ?” 

It must be remembered that since our childhood we 
had, although we had written regularly to each other, met 
only a few times, and that our letter-intimacy had been 
far greater than the intimacy we achieved when we were 
together. She had written to me, of course, of her en¬ 
gagement, and of her wedding, at which an attack of 
fever had prevented my being present, but naturally a 
young girl of that time and her kind did not say in so 
many words, “I love him.” 

So now I had put my question on a sudden impulse, 
and sat waiting for her answer. 

She looked at me placidly, her eyes—eyes like those 
of a statue of Pallas Athene, magnificently sculptured, 
with curtain-like lids, and the same unspeculating stare 
—fixed on mine in complete serenity. 

“Ho, Gray,” she answered at length; “I never have 
been. I am, of course, very fond of dear Humphrey, 
but I never was fin love’ with him.” 

“He is not the only man you have known, my dear,” 
I returned ruthlessly. 

“Ho. But I was so stupidly shy when I was a girl, 
and then, you know,” she added with an air of trium¬ 
phant conclusiveness, “I was only just twenty when I 
was married!” 

It was absurd, but it touched me in an odd way. It 
seemed to me an almost incredible thing that, her family 


Julia 


56 

and associations being what they were, she could, at forty- 
two, be innocent enough to regard her wife- and mother¬ 
hood as safeguards against the common fate of human 
beings. 

“You have missed a good deal,” I said without pro¬ 
test, and to my surprise she denied this. 

“Oh, no,” she cried animatedly, “it was just the great¬ 
est piece of luck!” 

“Luck?” My voice sounded heavy with stupidity. 

“Of course. Before I met Humphrey I used to be 
dreadfully afraid that—I might. Oh, how afraid I was!” 

“But why, in God’s name?” I burst out in Italian, 
so confused she had made me. 

“Ah, who is slow-witted now, Grigetto ? Why, because 
of Dukie, and Poodle, and darling Mamma, of course— 
to say nothing of the ones who have been dead for ages. 
Don’t you see ? The reasons that frighten me for Sandra 
used to frighten me for myself, naturally!” 

“But you weren’t—‘high-strung.’ ” 

“Hobody can escape from his heritage,” was her sur¬ 
prising answer, “and though I am dull I am—well—I 
love pretty hard, you know, Gray, my family and you— 
for instance, so why should I not have loved some man 
pretty hard ?” 

I had no answer to this argument, and she went on, ob¬ 
viously proud of her victory: “So it was the most fortu¬ 
nate thing in the world that Humphrey came along. 
Dear Humphrey,” she added in a voice warm with grati¬ 
tude ; “he has always been so good to me.” 

The Duke, who for some minutes had had his old 
crustacean eye on me, beckoned to me just then, and I 
was obliged to leave J ulia. 


Julia 


57 


[ n ] 

This so-kind Humphrey I decided to study a little, so 
the next day I accepted his offer of a run in his two- 
seater. “We have a few sights/’ he said, as we rolled 
down the short avenue, “and the air is very soft to¬ 
day . . .” 

It was; it was a delicious day, cool, and mild, and 
palely sunny. The country was a gently rolling one, in¬ 
tensely green, studded with charming villages and, here 
and there, with what I believe are no longer called “gen¬ 
tlemen’s seats.” 

These English country-places were to me, midway as 
they came between the* dingy, sombre antiquity of their 
Italian coevals and the unromantic magnificence of the 
few great American houses I happen to know, a revela¬ 
tion. The secret of their charm is, I believe, less their 
inherent beauty, though it is the most perfect in the 
world, than their exquisite fitness to their surroundings. 
When an English house stands on a hill, four corners to 
the wind, it stands there more squarely, more suitably 
to a hill, more serenely aloft than any other house, and 
when it nestles on a slope or in a valley, it nestles with 
incomparable cosiness. England is undoubtedly the home 
of homes. In Italy the real house is in the town; and the 
castle or the villa shows the occasional nature of its habi¬ 
tation: in England the country-house is the home; and 
this one sees, imaginatively, even from the distant road, 
somehow. At least thus it appeared to my ignorant and 
delighted eyes that morning five years ago, as Vine-Innes 
drove me first to the coast, along terrifyingly steep yet 
cheerful-looking white and green cliffs, and, through a 


Julia 


58 

cathedral town that lay in the Sunday stillness as if under 
a spell, through village after village, and then, towards 
six, hack to King’s Camel. 

We had tea at a thirteenth-century farm-house belong¬ 
ing to the Duke, and my host was as charming to me as 
it lay in his nature to be. 

Naturally I was grateful, and inclined to like him in 
return for his efforts, but the more we talked the more I 
felt the edge of his essentially chilly nature. 

His head, as I have said, was small and flat topped. 
I now learned that his beautiful hands and feet were too 
small, and that his knees were rather worse than I had 
noticed before. His voice was thin and a little nasal, his 
hair silky but scant; altogether an unmagnetic, unat¬ 
tractive man, though highly-bred and of smooth enough 
manners. 

He was, moreover, conceited, and even physically vain, 
a thing I believe to be rare among his countrymen. He 
referred often to the hands and feet of other people, and 
once to his own height, which was indeed close on six-foot- 
one, though he managed to remain, in spite of it, quite 
unimpressive. Mentally, I compared him to a pendent 
rope, which one would characterise as long and not tall. 

He told me, with a kind of pompous frankness, many 
things about himself. He had gone to Sandhurst his 
“people” having always been “Army people”; he had 
gone to India as a subaltern, and then been at the Curragh 
—wherever that may be; I did not ask him—and when he 
married, was already a captain (a very youthful captain, 
I was given, delicately, to understand), and settled in 
some barracks in London. 


Julia 


59 

“You weren’t at our wedding/’ lie commented with 
courtesy. “They were all very sorry I remember-” 

“Laid up with typhoid.” 

“Ah. Bad thing, typhoid. Then, as you know, we 
went to India, and my wife couldn’t stand the heat, and 
came home.” 

“Hard on you,” I returned, bent on politeness equal 
to his. 

“Very hard,” he corrected me, “on us both.” 

A little incident gave me a further light on the charac¬ 
ter of the man who had “saved” my poor beautiful Julia 
Ives from life. 

We had tea in the farm-house kitchen—a beautiful 
room such as one may read of in a thousand novels, but 
which I now saw for the first time. In a big, lead-paned 
window to the south was a box full of growing hyacinths, 
evidently the pride of the good farmer’s wife—her beau¬ 
tiful name was Grimes—and when we left she brought 
to us a big basket full of the lovely classic things, mauve, 
pink, white and blue, and, with a little movement, the 
degenerate offspring of the old curtsy, of which she seemed 
half-unconscious, asked Vine-Innes to take them to “Miss 
Julia” from her. 

“She will be delighted, Mrs. Grimes,” he assured her, 
glancing at the flowers, and we took our leave. We slid 
swiftly down the slope, through big white gates and into 
the road. 

As soon as we were a mile or so from the house he 
suddenly leaned back, took the flowers from the hood, and 
threw them overboard. “Can’t stand their stench,” he 
said shortly. 



60 


Julia 


After a moment I made a mild protest to the effect 
that Julia might have liked the pretty offering. 

“Julia has all she wants at home,” he returned, his 
little mouth fretful, “the tenants are always a nuisance 
with their presents . . .” 

It was a small matter, but it made me extremely angry, 
and I needed all my self-control for a few minutes. 

To do the fellow justice, he did tell his wife of the 
gift and its fate. She laughed equably. 

“Poor Humphrey,” she said to me, “he can’t stick the 
smell of hyacinths-—” 

“And you ?” I snapped. 

She looked surprised. “Why, Gray,” she answered, 
“you know how I love them! Don’t you remember the 
bulbs Poodle got for us in Rome, and how Auntie Martha 
showed us how to take care of them ? I never see a hya¬ 
cinth that I don’t think of Auntie Martha . . 

An old-fashioned lady, I thought, to have remembered 
my mother (whom she had not once seen after those early 
days) for thirty-four years! 

Logically, her attitude about Mrs. Grimes’ gift made 
me resent her husband’s attitude less. “If she doesn’t 
mind,” I thought, “I surely needn’t.” 

But I could not for all that like Vine-Innes any the 
more. 

[ hi ] 

“You do loathe me, Mr. McPadden, don’t you?” 

It was Mrs. Cripps who-“chucked” the question at me 
a day or two later, as we sat watching Sandra, young 
Lavington, and Fanning play tennis. 


Julia 61 

“By no means, Mrs. Cripps,” I returned with prompt¬ 
ness and veracity. 

Gilbert and Sullivan taught us long ago that there is 
beauty in the bellow of the blast, and though I would not 
for worlds be guilty of associating the words “blast” or 
“blasted” with a lady, I must confess that this uncouth 
Circe at that time interested me only despite her charms. 
There was undoubtedly a power in the woman, and, poor 
little novelist, dyer’s hand, that I was, I could not resist 
trying to submit her to my test. 

“I write books, you know,” I went on, “and naturally 
you interest me.” 

“As the Wicked Woman ? Large as to feet, but small 
as to morality ?” she drawled. 

“Exactly. Though I have not had the privilege of 
seeing your feet.” 

“Ugly. Canal-boats. You can,” she boomed softly, 
“judge by my hand.” 

It was a large hand, as I have said, but it was of a 
noble shape and oddly attractive. 

I said as much. 

“Have you,” she resumed, her strong teeth gleaming 
like blocks of marble, “ceased wondering in what lies my 
charm—my oh! so reprehensible charm ?” 

“I am not,” I returned mildly, “an intrusive man.” 

For three days we fenced in this silly, amusing way, 
and then one night when I couldn’t sleep, and came 
creeping downstairs in search of a whisky and soda, we 
had it out. 

She was after cigarettes, of which, luckily, I had a 
supply, and over the easily revived embers of the library 
fire, we came to grips. 


62 Julia 

She, it must be remembered, did the attacking, while 
I, mild, small man, parried her wild thrusts. 

The preliminary flourishes over, she got down to hard 
pan by asking me gruffly why I had never fallen in love 
with Julia. 

“How,” I parried, “do you know that I have not ?” 

“Is thy servant a dog?” 

Then I became serious, and explained to the drawling 
creature that I had always loved Julia too much to fall 
in love with her. 

She nodded, a kind of light seeming, from nowhere, 
to fall on her big, queer face. 

“I beg your pardon, Mr. McFadden,” she said with 
what at least seemed to be real simplicity. 

(These accidents of simplicity can happen to the most 
complicated.) 

We talked on for an hour, I should say, chiefly about 
Julia, whom she seemed in an odd way to appreciate. 

“She is like,” she at last declared in a stumbling sum¬ 
ming-up, “a little heap of snow on a hill in the spring. 
Quite white, quite unblackened by the mud of the val¬ 
leys, and yet destined to-” 

“Hot to melt, at all events, Mrs. Cripps,” I declared 
with firmness, and she laughed rather drearily. 

“Oh, no, not to melt, but,” she hesitated, “nevertheless, 
to disappear. You know the kind of little snow- 
wreath . . .” 

I thought the word very pretty, and liked still more 
what she went on to say: “Snow-drops and primroses will 
grow where it has been, but . . .” 

It was really charming of her, I thought. 

She told me as well that she was not thirsting for Dicky 



Julia 


63 

Fanning’s blood, and that poor darling Freddy bored her 
to tears, and did I not find it tragic ? I did, as well as 
brazen, but I confess I had, by the time our talk came 
to an end, a glimmering of understanding as to what her 
queer power was. Julia had called it charm, but it was 
something far worse than that. 

Fanning was the closest approach to the American 
stage-ass Englishman of thirty years ago that I had ever 
met. He actually did say “ha” at intervals, and stammer, 
as in my boyhood I saw E. H. Sothern do at the Hew 
York Lyceum, I think, in a play called “Lord—some¬ 
thing,” the name is gone. 

He was shy, silent, given to dark blushes, and yet he 
was, I soon saw, immensely relying, in his open wooing 
of the notorious Eva, on his position and his money. 

“Of course,” Sandra was once good enough to make 
clear to me, “she’d be an unspeakable id not to marry 
him, for even Fan and the old girls have not been able 
to make matters quite as they were before, and besides, 
he’s incredibly rich, you know. Pit-props for the war.” 

What pit-props were I had—I have—no idea, but I 
watched the possessor of the wealth they had achieved 
with an added interest as he conducted his pig-headed 
courtship. 

The Duke was much tickled by his methods, and once 
told me so. “That girl won’t marry him,” he announced 
as we were, because of our infirmities, being driven home 
from The Cottage—the Ives’s place—together. 

“Why not?” 

“Because, my dear boy, to marry him and settle down 
would be a sensible thing to do, and whatever Eva can 
be accused of, no one would dare call her sensible.” 


64 


Julia 


The old man spoke rather bitterly, and I daresay I 
showed my surprise at it, for after a minute he went on: 
“The beastly part about being a man of birth and for¬ 
tune is that so many people without his excuses try to 
imitate the liberties his position has allowed him to take 
with his life.” 

“Such as?” I asked mildly, and that ivorine old man 
laughed, patting my arm. 

“My dear McFadden,” he answered, “you are a nov¬ 
elist, you present Life to your readers. I have only 
lived. Why ask me!” 

And I did not insist. The happy English class who 
have, up to this, undoubtedly been privileged to do more 
or less as they like, seems to be dwindling fast, and more’s 
the pity. The Radicals, or whatever they are for the 
moment called, can make peers of buttermen and miners, 
but they cannot confer this delightful privilege, and when 
it has finally died out England will be no more delightful 
to read about than any other country—even America. . . . 

On the fourteenth day of my visit two things happened: 
Sandra sent young Lavington home with a very big flea in 
his ear, and His Grace the Duke of Shropshire—what a 
beautiful expression “His Grace” is!—went to Paris. 

I was standing at the door with Sandra and half a 
dozen dogs when the old gentleman came downstairs lean¬ 
ing on his French valet’s arm. Sandra was in a black 
mood, for as she told me, every one in the house had had 
a whack at her about Godfrey Lavington. I can see the 
child now as she stood, her hands, in a gentlemanly way, 
in her pockets, her shoulders hunched, thoroughly dis¬ 
jointed in the modern manner, and, in the modern man¬ 
ner, thoroughly graceful. 


Julia 


65 

“I wish he’d take me with him,” she growled as the 
Duke, after courteous adieux to us all, was gently hoisted 
into his car; “these people here are going to give me 
merry hell about Godfrey . . 

“But why did you flirt with Godfrey?” I enquired in 
a mild voice that I knew to be extremely exasperating. 

Naturally she flew at me, and her words were enlight¬ 
ening. I listened with that joy in new things that is one 
of the writer’s recompenses for many afflictions, and 
watched the rapid disappearance of the motor! Presently 
I answered her: 

“I am a hoary and decrepit natural enemy, San- 
druccia,” I observed, heavily facetious, “but I must say 
that if you were mine, I’d-” 

“Throw me over your knees and spank me, I sup¬ 
pose ?” 

“Oh, no. Aged and out-of-date of course I am, but 
indelicate, I trust, never. I was about to say that my 
way of retribution would be to give you enough rope to 
hang yourself good and plenty.” (I was rather pathet¬ 
ically proud of this dash of slang.) 

“How should I hang myself?” Her pale and, as a 
consequence of the rumpus about Lavington, oddly rav- 
aged-looking little face turned to me. 

“Of that I have no idea,” I returned, reverting to old- 
fashioned courtesy, which, I had learned, is after all the 
one thing that can flabbergast these cocksure young crea¬ 
tures. “I know only that, given enough rope, you would 
most certainly do it.” 

“Oh, Gray,” said Julia, unexpectedly, from behind us, 
“how unkind of you.” 

Sandra stalked away, poking her head in the new 



66 


Julia 


turtle-fashion, and Julia and I stood there in the now 
almost-to-be-felt sunshine, silent. 

She wore, I remember, a crocus-coloured tweed coat 
and skirt, and a white silk shirt, and I also remember 
that such clothes did not suit her, and that the lines in 
her face looked deeper than I had ever seen them. 

“Let’s go indoors,” I exclaimed hastily, and to her be¬ 
wilderment. Women never understand men’s clumsy 
delicacies. 

She was, however, a gracious hostess, and at once led 
the way to the chintz-room, for which she knew I had a 
strong weakness. To this day, no doubt, she would think 
(if she ever gave it a thought, which she does not, and 
if she were the kind of woman to count on weaknesses in 
her friends, which again she’s not), “Poor old Gray, he 
probably felt that he looked like a ghost there in the 
sun. ...” 

A week later the telegram came. 

[ iv ] 

We were in the sunk garden, the Princess, Julia, the 
Prince, Poodle, and I. It was evening—about five I 
should say, and the sky was full of beauty; the chocolate- 
coloured soil was now rich with green spikes and salad- 
coloured leaves, some with yellow, purple and white 
flowers, most of them, I think, tulips. 

We had been for a long motor-drive to see an old 
Norman Keep on the edge of the sea-cliff. I was steeped 
in a delightful languor that could hardly be given the 
discouraged name of fatigue. 

We lay, Julia, the Princess, and I, in long cane chairs, 


Julia 


67 


wrapped in rugs, under a ten-foot brick wall, on which 
climbed pear and cherry and peach trees, and Scarletta, 
his hands in his pockets, paced up and down, singing 
to us. 

Sicilians are charming people, and he was one of the 
best of his nation and class. His gentleness was as un¬ 
surpassable as one felt his potential anger to be, and his 
voice would have lured angels from their clouds, could 
they have heard it. 

I remember that as the footman, a bow-legged young 
man named Peters, came through the green door and 
down the path, the Prince was humming, or crooning, 
the Willow-song from Verdi’s “Otello,” in his lovely 
warm voice. 

“ Tovera Barbara,’ ” he sang, and then, as Peters held 
his small salver out to Julia, “ ‘Salce, Salce.’. . .” 

Oh, yes, “'Willow, willow,” and, for that matter, “povera 
Barbara.” 

I write this in the little cathedral courtyard at Mon¬ 
reale, with the Golden Shell and Palermo spread below 
me; one of the most beautiful plains in the world, and 
it is all years ago, and yet I swear that I can shut my 
eyes and hear Scarletta’s heavenly voice as it died away 
into silence while Julia tore open the rust-coloured en¬ 
velope. 

“Oh, dear,” she cried, “it’s from Dominic. Mamma, 
darling, Dukie is—dying, in Paris.” 


CHAPTER IV 
[ i ] 


T O this day I cannot remember what was Vine-Innes’s 
reason for not taking his wife to Paris himself, but 
I do remember thinking at the time that it sounded more 
like an excuse than a reason. 

Lady Ives would have gone, but Poodle, quite miserable 
at the idea of her leaving him, begged her to stay, re¬ 
minding her with all his old-time blithe tactlessness that, 
though she was one generation nearer to the Duke, the old 
man had always liked Julia better. 

“He’ll be awfully bucked when he sees you,” he con¬ 
cluded to his daughter, and the Princess shrugged her 
shoulders at him (thinking, plainly, that, considering the 
wording of Dominic’s wire, there was little chance of the 
Duke’s being “bucked” by anything more in this world). 

I believe that she, the Princess, was quite truthful 
when she told me, a day or two before this, that there 
were times when for a minute she quite forgot that she 
was no longer Poodle Ives’s wife. “I still feel so dread¬ 
fully responsible,” she had explained, “for his gaffes . . . .” 

It struck me as characteristic of the new times that are 
upon us, that while Sandra had, during the War, driven 
a dug-up colonel up and down the East coast, and would 
have gone to Timbuctoo alone if she had felt drawn to 
that country, she yet showed immense relief when I had 
agreed to Vine-Innes’ suggestion that I should escort Julia 
to the dying old gentleman’s bedside. 

68 


Julia 


69 


“Of course,” the girl said to me at breakfast the next 
morning, “she could go alone, but on the other hand it 
would never do for her to.” 

“Why?” I asked, interested, and she shrugged her 
shoulders. 

“Oh, she’d be miserable, that’s all. She’s never gone 
further than London alone, you know.” 

“You have. . . 

“Oh, I! That’s different.” Then she told me of poor 
Julia’s efforts at war-work. “She went to help Mrs. Brad- 
field’s canteen at Victoria Station—we were in town that 
year because of Father’s War-Office job—and every day 
I ran her up in my colonel’s car. She stuck it out for two 
months, and then gave in.” 

“But why, Sandruccia ? It isn’t like her to give in,” I 
protested, my pride in Julia a trifle hurt. 

“Couldn’t do it; just failed.” 

“Couldn’t pour out tea, or cut sandwiches?” I jeered. 

For a moment the vivid blue of her eyes looked dull 
and murky; then she laughed. “Oh, Grigetto dear,” she 
said, “how you do adore her. Ho, it was this: She scared 
the life out of the Tommies! Most of the women, and 
practically all of the girls, could talk with them and make 
them feel comfy, but Mummy paralysed them. They 
always took her for Lady Willingdon, The Caountess,’ you 
know, and Lady W. didn’t react to that, either. Poor 
Mummy, I was awfully sorry for her . . .” 

It was only seven o’clock, for Vine-Innes was sending 
us to Dover by motor, and it’s a long run. It was a 
delicious morning, having rained the night before, and 
through the open windows came all sorts of pleasant 
sounds. I munched my breakfast, very content with my 


70 


Julia 


lot, and liking the Brat better than I had ever liked her. 
It was plain that her mother’s to her inconceivable plight 
had really roused her sympathy. 

“You see,” she went on after a pause, “she couldn’t talk 
to them; their lingoes and slang were Greek to her, and 
then she used to stand carefully attired in her oldest coat 
and skirt, ringless, broochless, dressed for her part and— 
utterly dried up. They used to sniff, and stamp softly 
on the floor when she spoke to them, and it hurt her feel¬ 
ings very much when Babs Willingdon would chat with 
them as if they were all her dearest friends. . . .” 

“Of course it hurt her feelings. Hush!” I exclaimed, 
“here she is.” 

There she was, and there was Poodle, inimitably 
dapper and rosy in what they all called “plus fours,” 
with a carnation in his coat; and there was Vine-Innes 
thoughtful of her comfort and mine, but chilly to the 
last, because of the predominance of the East wind in 
his composition. 

'And presently in came the Prince, bringing excuses 
for “Ambra”—at which excuses Sandra boldly winked 
at me—and several new novels, and her love. 

I was sorry to leave these charming and pleasant 
people, and I stood up in the car and waved back at 
them, grouped there on the drawbridge, as long as I could 
see them. 

“They have all been most kind to me,” I said, sitting 
down again, and settling my hat firmly. “You must not 
let Yine-Innes forget his promise to bring Sandra and you 
to Rome in October.” 


Julia 


71 


C ii ] 

It was late in the evening when we reached the tall old 
house near the Place des Vosges where, for the last fifty 
years, the Duke had had his pied-a-terre in Paris. 

We were cold and wet, for Prance had given us a tear¬ 
ful greeting, and Fountain, Julia’s maid, insisted on 
changing her mistress’s shoes before she would let her go 
to see the sick man. 

Dominic, a sleek, pale man, with a scar on his cheek 
about which I used to wonder, gave me news of the old 
gentleman while I waited for her. 

“Oh, no, sir, not a fit,” he said, “it is bronchitis. His 
Grace insisted on driving in the Bois last Sunday, and 
caught cold. ... Ho, sir, I do not think His Grace is 
worse to-day, hut then, he is so old, so old”—he shrugged 
his shoulders submissively—“and the doctor thinks his 
heart will give out.” 

Two nuns sat in the faintly-lighted drawing-room tell¬ 
ing their beads, and waiting for whatever might be coming. 

Julia’s French was correct enough but not colloquial, so 
I did the questioning, and presently we sat down while 
Sceur Marie Agathe trotted into the sick-room. 

“Monseigneur dort, madame,” was her news, but before 
we had answered her the old man’s thin voice reached us. 
He was cursing Dominic for being absent, but Julia went 
to the door and he at once stopped. 

I wandered up and down the high, chill room, wonder¬ 
ing what stories it could tell of that dying man’s younger 
days. He had “treated himself generously,” he told us, 
at Ives’s birthday dinner, and I well believed it, and that 
he was glad of it. Hot for him regrets for the things he 


Julia 


72 

had not done. The furniture was good of its kind, Louis 
XVI., and time had mellowed its gilding and softened the 
once rose-pink hangings. Sconces held clusters of wax- 
candles, though there was electric light as well, and to 
my surprise the tables and gueridons were gay with flow¬ 
ers, chiefly white ones. “Monseigneur aime bien les 
fleurs,” the little mouse-like Sister Marie Agnes told me, 
“Dominic renews them every morning, and I am allowed 
to take the others to our chapel.” 

“Fresh flowers for Monseigneur le Due, and faded ones 
for le bon Dieu,” I observed smiling, but she did not smile. 

“Hot faded, monsieur; and le bon Dieu accepts humbler 
gifts than they. . . .” 

Then she told me that Sister Marie Agathe and she were 
troubled because Monseigneur had not seen a priest. 

“Of his own faith, I mean, of course. . . .” 

“I do not believe the Duke to be a religious man.” 

Her smile was very pretty. “Ah no, monsieur, that he 
told us himself, but—it is very few people who, at the end 
of their lives here, do not feel the need of religion. . . 

Like, I thought, a traveller feeling the need of a letter 
of introduction to his strange host in a strange country. 
But I of course did not say this, and presently Julia came 
out, followed by the doctor, who had reached the sick-room 
by another door, and we three went back into the more 
cheerful study, where Dominic had prepared some quite 
unnecessary food for us. 

Julia had been crying, but was quiet now, and the 
doctor, who was a young man, and spoke excellent Eng¬ 
lish, bade us both hope for the best. 

“The Duke is very old,” he said, sipping a glass of 
Sauterne, his back to the fire, “but he has an excellent, 


Julia 


73 

unspoilt constitution. Ah, monsieur,” he went on with 
a, gush of enthusiasm, “you and I shall not he so sound 
when we are nearly ninety. Men of our day live too 
hard and too fast. . . 

I burst out laughing and even Julia smiled. 

“The Duke,” I explained to M. Morin-Duplessy, “was 
a notorious viveur for fifty years before you were born. 
He is said to have drunk two bottles of champagne every 
night of his life for forty years; he lived on the fat of 
all the lands of the earth; he was never in his bed till 
broad daylight, and ...” 

I glanced at Julia, who was looking quite properly 
proud of her aged kinsman’s former prowess. 

“. . . et, en Espagne, mille et trois. . . .” 

The doctor threw up his hands, empty glass and all. 
“Parbleu,” he cried, “it is indeed, then, a nature of iron. 
I wish it were mine.” 

Ho doubt he did wish it. I know I wished it had been 
mine. The world is jull of injustice, and this is a great 
one: that men who burn their candle at both ends so often, 
in their last years, live most comfortably, enjoying the 
best of health, while abstinence and early hours frequently 
lead only to dyspepsia and uric acid. . . . 

I slept very soundly in an authentic Empire bed, and 
Woke to delicious rolls and coffee, and a blaze of sunshine. 

The Duke did not, I may say here, die. He lived for 
a long time, and went on eating apples. 

His illness, as I look back on it, seems to have been 
simply the instrument chosen by the gods on which to pipe 
Julia Vine-Innes to what lay for her on their knees. 

The gods piped, and she—we all of us, indeed—danced. 
And now begins her real story. 


Julia 


74 

For forty-two years she had had no real story, although 
she was a mother. She had been her father’s, and, in a 
lesser degree, her mother’s daughter; she had been Vine- 
Innes’s wife; then she had been Sandra’s mother; but 
never until that April night on the Channel-boat had she 
been, in the only way that counts, to a woman, her real 
self. 

We had stayed three days in Paris, I had had several 
charming talks with that wise and witty octogenarian, and 
Julia spent a good deal of money on clothes for Sandra 
and herself (I’m glad to say that she had always loved 
clothes) and the Princess; we heard an opera, and saw a 
play, and then, having said au revoir to the convalescent, 
who was, I felt, glad to be rid of us, we drove to that 
horrible Gare du Nord and set out on our way—to many 
things. 

It was a blusterous night, the moon in her second quar¬ 
ter was blown into obscurity every now and then, and 
from time to time the carriage window was slashed with 
rain like strings of silver beads. 

The presence of two old ladies in the compartment pre¬ 
venting my smoking, Julia presently sent me off to find a 
smoker. This was at Amiens, and as I hate squeezing 
through a crowded corridor I hurried along the platform 
and got into a nearly empty “fumeurs” just as the train 
started. 

In the far corner sat a big man smoking a very strong 
but good cigar. I lit my pipe and opened a paper, but 
I had had a good deal of pain the night before and had 
not slept, so I was tired, and glad to have the chance of a 
snooze before facing the disagreeable bustle of Calais. 

I went to sleep, my paper over my head, and must have 


Julia 


75 


been off for some time, because when I awoke the quar¬ 
rel was in full swing, and quarrels don’t begin at that 
point. 

A lady had come in and was saying, as I opened my 
eyes: “But hang it all, you must see that you owe me 
that much.” She was shrill with anger and her not im¬ 
peccable vowel-sounds were, I judged, worse than usual. 
“You ought,” she went on, as the man did not speak, “to 
be horse-whipped. . . .” 

“Oh, come now, Mabel,” he answered in an undertone, 
“that chap can’t sleep much longer if you yell in this 

way. . . 

By the way he said “yell” I knew him to be an Irish¬ 
man, and his voice was delightful. His face, I realised, 
I had hardly noticed behind its cloud of oily blue smoke. 
“Poor devil,” I thought, stirring drowsily to warn them, 
“he’s in for it.” 

I blinked stupidly as I emerged from behind my paper, 
and then looked out of the window, but the woman was 
too furious to care whether or not she was heard. She 
went on in a torrent of unmeasured words, antagonising 
the poor brute more every minute, of course, as angry 
women will do. It seemed that she wanted him to take 
her with him to Brazil, and, furthermore, that she consid¬ 
ered him to have promised to take her. 

“I promised nothing,” he growled from time to time, 
and then suddenly she broke into German, saying some¬ 
thing that goaded him beyond his self-control. 

“Good God!” he cried in a tense and dangerous-sound¬ 
ing undertone, “will you hold your tongue ?” 

Her answer need not be translated, but it was pretty 
bad. I went into the corridor, but found all the seats in 


76 


Julia 


the carriages occupied, and as I can’t stand long at a time, 
was obliged to come back. 

I opened my paper and tried not to listen, but naturally 
could not help it. If the woman had been a lady I should 
have told her I spoke German, but she being what she was 
I knew my speaking could only result in my being dragged 
into the discussion—I could hear her appealing to me to 
judge of the justice of her cause, and shrank from it in 
horror—so I sat in silence, trying to look interested in an 
article on English politics. 

“Why do you think I came to Paris with you,” she 
bawled, presently, and he answered in the bored voice that 
in a man means the end of whatever interest he may ever 
have felt for the woman who elicits it: 

“Because you wanted to, I suppose, my dear—I cer¬ 
tainly didn’t suggest it. . . 

And then she cried, bouncing into the seat opposite 
me and blowing her nose with such an utter disregard of 
me that I might not have been there. 

She was, I saw, very pretty, with splendid red hair 
and a milk-white skin. Then I glanced at the man, who 
lay back, exhausted with disgust, his eyes shut. 

He had rather a fine face, grizzled dark hair worn away 
at the temples, heavy eyebrows and deep eye-orbits. I 
judged him to be about my own age and noticed that 
he was burnt and weather-beaten. The aquilinity of his 
dark face was spoiled by the fact that his nose had been 
broken and reset not quite straight, which gave him a 
rather charming expression, and under a clipped black 
moustache his angry mouth showed clear-cut and strong. 
Suddenly he opened his eyes and caught me studying 
him. 


Julia 


77 


“Come, Mabel,” be said in a quiet voice, “dry your 
eyes and let us not bore this gentleman, who understands 
German perfectly, by any more histrionics.” 

“Sorry,” I murmured, and he smiled, showing his big 
white lower teeth in a way at once fierce and kindly. The 
lady rose and marched into the corridor, slamming the 
door. 

I took up my paper again, and my companion, with a 
sigh, lit a fresh cigar. He was distressed, but he did not 
seem, as most men would have been, embarrassed, and 
presently he spoke to me. 

“I’ve seen you in Rome,” he said, “at the Buca.” 

The Buca is a tiny subterranean cook-house near the 
river, where I sometimes go for roast-kid and fried arti¬ 
chokes, and I nodded. 

“Yes. Haunt of yours ?” 

“Oh no, I rarely get to Rome, but I’ve been twice to the 
Buca. Like the old cook!” 

“So do I. And her cooking . . .” 

We chatted about Rome and Roman food, and presently 
he mentioned the man who had shown him about the old 
town. 

“Percy Angell! Then do you know his mother ?” 

“She’s my godmother,” he answered, adding with his 
queer laugh—“seems odd for me to have a godmother, but 
she really is . . .” 

“A kind of guardian angel,” I exclaimed, and then I 
saw my blunder and stopped short. 

“You mean—that charming lady who has just left us,” 
he said gravely. “Hever fair to judge a woman when 
she’s in a temper, is it ?” 

“Oh no, of course not. . . .” 


Julia 


78 

We smoked in silence for a moment, and then he said, 
still with gravity: “She’s a very charming woman and has 
heen most kind to me, hut—oh, well, demmit, I can’t take 
all the charming women I know to Brazil, can I ?” 

I agreed that he could not, and after a minute he went 
on: “Mind you, I never had the least idea of such a thing. 
I’m going up the Amazon with some Indians, as a matter 
of fact, and may he eaten by savages or wild beasts, or 
just die of fever, so is it likely ?” 

“Hot in the least likely.” 

“Well, there you are. She—Mabel—is a widow, a real 
one, and when I came to Paris I was enchanted to have her 
accept my invitation to come with me. . . 

“I see.” 

I liked him for the grimness with which he went 
through the rigmarole that he knew, as well as I, to be 
perfectly useless, and to let him down easy I asked him 
some question about the Amazon. 

It was astonishing to see the superficial lines of racket¬ 
ing die out of his face as he got back to the real things 
of his life. He had been exploring that bloody river, he 
said, for years, and could not break away from it. 

“I’ve got a wee place in Wicklow,” he went on thoughts 
fully, his keen eyes softening again, “and it’s time I settled 
down and married. In a small way my family is an old 
one, and I’m the last of it, but-” 

“You prefer rivers to women,” I suggested, and he burst 
out laughing. 

“God help me, I’m not so sure. I’m nearly forty-five, 
and ought to know better, but I’ve a terrible weakness for 
them. Take poor Mabel, for instance. Prettiest blue eyes 
in the world, and a little thread of a singing voice to coax 



Julia 79 

flies out of the honey-pot, hut what good did it do either 
of us? Hone.” 

“She seems—fond of you,” I said gingerly, but des¬ 
perately interested. 

“Oh yes, I daresay. That,” he explained, “is the devil 
of it. We’re keenest in the beginning, and they only get 
really keen towards the end. . . .” 

There was, despite his age and the lines in his face, a 
boyish something about him that I liked immensely. It 
was plain to me that, “Mabel” having left the compart¬ 
ment, he had completely forgotten her vicinity. 

“What,” I asked, as her blue sleeve again leaned against 
the window behind him, “will she do next ?” 

“Ah yes, bless my soul. Oh! she’ll write—write long 
letters, you know, and telephone—they always do.” 

“And you ?” 

He grinned. “I must first ask you to believe that I 
have not, as the saying goes, wronged the lady—she came 
quite of her own accord—and then I’ll tell you that I shall 
shift my quarters to-morrow morning before she’s had time 
to ring me up, and in six weeks I sail for South America. 
See?” 

I saw. “But it is, after all,” I added to my affirmative, 
“rough on her. If she loves you . . .” 

His face hardened. “Ah, bah, love! What muck people 
talk about love!” 

“Thanks.” 

He laughed, not very mirthfully. “You are a sensitive 
kind of chap, I can see that, and you aren’t very young. 
You Jcnow that this little week-end had no more to do 
with love than it had to do with bloody murder. Don’t 
you ?” 


80 Julia 

“Well, yes, if you put it in that way, but—as you 
say,-” 

Then poor Mabel came in, tidily powdered, her lips 
afire with lip-stick crimson, and took her suit-case from 
the rack. “Good-bye,” she said haughtily to the big man, 
“I propose to go on alone, and I suppose it is not neces¬ 
sary for me to ask you not to give my name to your new 
friend. . . .” 

With a glare in my direction she left us, and he, with 
what to me seemed commendable wisdom, sat down again. 

“Whew!” 

I jerked down the window. The train had stopped at 
Calais Ville and I saw Mabel’s figure running along the 
platform and get into the train at the front. 

The man, I thought, was a good fellow, and entertain¬ 
ing. I would arrange to meet him again. But at this 
moment Fountain’s drab face appeared in the lamplight, 
and she told me that her mistress wanted me. 

“I must go,” I told my companion; “I’m wanted. See 
you on the boat, if you care to.” 

“Right oh! I’ll be on deck, and I’ll keep an eye peeled 
for you. . . 


[ iu ] 

The wind had risen, and the boat bounced about like a 
cork as we left the harbour, and Julia and I went at once 
to the chairs that Fountain had been told to secure for us. 

“Your cabin is just inside, sir,” said the woman, 
already, as is the way of many of her kind, preparing 
wholeheartedly to be sick, “I’ve ’ad your bags put in . . 

She left us, and Julia and I stood by the side looking 



Julia 81 

over the muddled, irregular waves now glaucous in a burst 
of moonlight. 

“I must walk round once or twice, Gray,” she said apolo¬ 
getically ; “I do so love a rough sea—it seems to rouse me 
somehow. You don’t mind?” 

“Mind your being roused?” 

“Goose. Mind being alone for a few minutes ?” 

“Not at all, and besides, I’m going to leave you after 
a bit, and have a talk with my friend of the train. . . 

For a few minutes she walked round the deck, a tall, 
beautifully-balanced figure, walking with a stately grace 
that I have never seen equalled in so big a woman, and I 
watched the few other passengers who followed her in her 
march—queer, uninteresting-looking people for the most 
part, as people have a way of looking when they first ap¬ 
pear on a passenger-deck. 

It was chilly, and deciding after a bit to go to my cabin 
and put on a heavier coat, I crawled to the companion- 
way, leaning on my rubber-shod stick. 

My cabin was just inside the door, and as I drank a 
whisky and soda I jerked the curtain back from the open 
porthole and, kneeling on the sofa, gazed out towards the 
sea. 

The moon, which had been again obscured, came out at 
the moment, a crude copper-coloured moon in the second 
quarter, and fell on Julia’s face as she came slowly round 
the deck-house from the left into my line of vision. She 
looked, as people believing themselves to be unobserved 
so often do look to a familiar spectator, strange, like a 
new Julia, and there was, I saw, a sort of puzzled trouble 
in her face. I remember thinking in that flash of time 
that her habitual serenity of expression must after all be 


82 


Julia 


an unconscious effort of tlie spirit of self-protection, and 
Sandra came into my mind. 

Then a sound of footsteps, the peculiar elastic footsteps 
of a heavy hut athletic, graceful man, caught my ear from 
the right, and I was about to glance in that direction 
when something in Julia’s face stopped me. 

I can’t describe the look except by saying that it was 
one of a tremendous awakening. She stood still, and the 
other steps stopped short. 

There, within ten feet of me, stood Julia Vine-Innes 
and my friend of the train, 4 gazing at each other as people 
may gaze under the sound of Gabriel’s trump. 

His look was elementary, but even in the shock of fear 
that shook me I recognised that it was one of adoration. 
I have seen much the same expression on the faces of one 
or two Mohammedans in the ecstasy of prayer, and force 
of habit being what it is I unconsciously made a mental 
note of the word “ecstasy.” 

Then I saw the man put his hand in a clumsy way to 
his hat, and march on. 

She told me afterwards that when, a second later, she 
saw my face in the shining frame of the porthole she 
did not know me, and it’s no wonder, though the cause lay 
in her and not in me. 

“Gray,” she said, as I came out to her, “who is he ?” 

“I have no idea—except that he’s the man with whom 
I came down from Paris.” 

She sat down on the foot of her chair and stared at the 
dancing horizon. It must have seemed to her that the 
very moon was dancing at that moment of her second birth. 

“Did you see?” she went on, not dramatically at all, 
but with a new simplicity added to her old one. 


Julia 


83 

“Yes, I saw.” Then I said, out of a blundering wish 
to prevent her giving herself irretrievably away, even to 
me, ‘Tie has been in Paris—with a lady. . . 

She looked at me with a smile of more irony than I had 
ever seen on her beautiful mouth. “Dear Grigetto,” she 
murmured, “you are horrified!” 

“By the lady ?” I cried with the asinine persistency that 
sometimes grips one. 

“Ho,” she returned, “by us/' 

The word appalled me, and I told her shortly that I was 
not horrified in that respect, but terrified. 

“But that is absurd,” she returned in uncharacteristic 
impatience. “Go and get him to come and talk to me.” 

“Pll do nothing of the kind, Julia. . . .” 

What I expected this unknown lady to reply I don’t 
know, but I was again surprised when she said, with sweet¬ 
ness, holding out her hand: “Very well, dear Grigetto, 
it doesn’t matter. He will come presently.” And he did. 
We had said no more when he came marching down the 
deck and stopped in front of us, a chair* under his arm. 

“May I sit here ?” he said. 

As they talked quite quietly about the sea, and the 
wind—they did not, and I thought it' odd, mention the 
moon. 

I might have been in China for all the notice they took 
of me, and I tried to put the situation into mental words. 
What had happened I knew was cataclysmic, but the aston¬ 
ishing thing was that it did not seem so. The man, though 
his deep tan seemed to have faded a little, looked in a 
curious way younger than he had looked in the train, and 
his face was noble with an emotion there than which noth¬ 
ing could be less like erotic excitement. 


84 


Julia 

As to Julia, whom I felt I ought to pity, her whole 
being seemed steeped in a still radiance. 

It was not, I told myself, just that they had fallen in 
love, though I, of course, knew that they had been sud¬ 
denly possessed by a profound passion, and in my un¬ 
sensed condition I was irresistibly constrained to try to 
find the novelist’s expression for what is practically not to 
be expressed in prose. 

“Are you not well, Gray?” Julia’s voice came to me 
as from a distance. 

“Yes—I am all right.” And they again forgot me. 

They were talking then, I remember, about Brahms, 
whom Julia did not appreciate, and the big man was ac¬ 
tually scolding her about it. 

They might have been married lovers; Darby and Joan 
in their middle period, I reflected, and I knew that nothing 
could have been worse. 

Worse, of course, from my point of view; my job ob¬ 
viously was to get Julia safely home, and away from this 
man with the broken nose. 

“Are you married?” she asked him presently. 

“Ho, thank God!” 

“I am; I have a daughter.” 

His alarming answer was that that didn’t matter. 

After a pause he added in a matter-of-fact way: “I am 
going to Brazil next week.” 

Then she said: “That doesn’t matter,” and I lost my 
head. 

“Look here, you two lunatics,” I shouted, leaning 
towards them to force them to listen to me, “what in 
Heaven’s name are you thinking about ?” 


Julia 85 

They stared at me, exactly the same look in their two 
faces. It was he who answered: 

“Are you a relation?” 

“Gray is my best friend,” she replied for me; adding, 
“but you mustn’t be unkind to us, Gray. . . .” 

I groaned, and then I laughed. “It’s like a ridiculous 
dream,” I snapped. “What do you think is going to hap¬ 
pen when we get to Dover ?” 

He shrugged his shoulders with a little gesture of the 
hands that I had seen in Spain, and supposed him to have 
picked up amongst the Portuguese and Spaniards in South 
America. 

“I shall go home with you, of course,” she said, “and— 
he will go-” 

“To London with Mabel!” It was so utterly abom¬ 
inable of me that I gasped with horror, and he laughed, 
those lower teeth of his shining. 

“Ho, not with Mabel. How I am a man, and have given 
up childish things.” 

“Rubbish. You are too old a dog for new tricks, and 
—why, great God, man, you don’t even know each other’s 
names!” 

“I have asked nothing,” he returned sternly. “Have 
you not noticed that ? I have asked, and shall ask, nothing 
but—the minutes between here and Dover.” 

Julia bowed her head in measured acquiescence, and I 
fell back into my obscurity. 

After a while I heard him fire out a series of rapid, 
curt questions: 

“What is your husband like?” 

“What is your daughter like?” 



86 


Julia 


“What is your home like ?” 

“Do you live in town as well?” 

“How old are you V 9 

“Have you travelled V 9 

“What is your favourite novel?” 

“Who is your favourite poet ?” 

“Do you play the piano ?” 

“Do you ride ?” 

“Do you take long walks ?” 

“Do you like to be alone ?” 

They were, despite his declared intention, questions, 
but they were, granting the sincerity of his acceptance 
of the impossibility of their ever meeting again, ques¬ 
tions almost pathetically innocent. The poor wretch was 
trying to create a background for his picture of her. 

I tried at first not to listen, but, catching his steady gaze 
once, I met such a kindly recognition of my right to know 
all there was to know, that I ceased trying to dissociate 
myself from the situation, and even suggested that she 
would show him the snapshot of the sunk garden with the 
carp-pond, that she had found in Paris, in her bag. 

She opened the bag and gave him the little picture. 

“I wish you were in it,” he said to her reproachfully 
like a child, and she and I both laughed. He returned 
the picture, and they went on with their game of ques¬ 
tions and answers. 

I was amazed, as I listened, by her power of descrip¬ 
tion, for it was new to me. 

Her fair, dignified sketch of Vine-Innes, for example, 
was a masterpiece of him in his most favourable light, 
and I reflected that it proved the honesty of her inten¬ 
tions, for if the remotest possibility of hurting him had 


Julia 87 

lurked in her mind, she must have spoken of him with a 
taint of bitterness. 

On her part she learned of the man: That he was forty- 
four; that he loved Byron, and Fletcher, and Yeats; that 
he couldn’t read Shakespeare; that he was a teetotaller 
because his father had not been one, and because in his 
job a fellow had to keep his nerves sound; that he had 
not travelled enormously, having always been busy with 
that jolly little ditch, the Amazon (his touches of slang 
astonished me, under the circumstances) ; that his “peo¬ 
ple” were all dead but one sister, whom he did not like, 
and finally that his name was James. 

He hesitated a little before telling her this, and I 
thought I knew that he was considering whether the ques¬ 
tion was well within the rules of the difficult game they 
had agreed to play. When he spoke it was to say: “My 
mother would have me called James, for her old Da, but 
she always called me Jim.” 

“Jim,” said Julia, thoughtfully, as if it were to her a 
very beautiful monosyllable. 

It was just then that poor Mabel came out on deck and 
beckoned to him. He rose at once and joined her, and 
they walked away. 

Julia and I did not speak for a while, and then I asked 
her if she really thought he would be able to keep his 
promise. 

“Of course, Gray.” 

“And not even hear from you ?” 

“Oh, my dear, I shan’t write”—she broke off with a 
little cry of pain, pointing out to sea. “Gray . . . there’s 
Dover.” 

Dover, indeed, and duty, and the miserable grind of 


88 


Julia 


a quiet life from which all the peace is gone. I could see 
it even better than she, and I ached for her. 

Fountain, bustling about collecting rugs and pillows, 
came as a relief, and when “James” (the name struck me 
as absurdly inadequate) came back, he found Julia and 
me sitting like snails bereft of their shells, rugless and 
chilly, and hand in hand. 

“It’s over,” she said to him. 

“No. Just begun. Now,” to me, “please don’t mis¬ 
understand me, Mr. Gray. Julia and I are decent old- 
fashioned people—yes, in spite of poor Mabel—indeed, 
poor Mabel in a way stamps me as being old-fashioned— 
and we are not going to ruin a lot of other lives in return 
for having been snatched up into heaven, like that fellow 
in the Bible.” 

“If you mean Elijah,” I suggested dryly, “he was 
snatched up alone.” 

“That is where I have the advantage of him,” he re¬ 
turned, laughing; adding immediately afterwards, “and 
as to being alone, good God, aren’t we going to be ?” 

He seemed wrung by pain for a moment, and on an 
impulse I held out my hand to him. 

“Thanks,” he said. There was a long pause as the boat 
swung round, and then he took Julia’s hand, rather cere¬ 
moniously, and kissed it. “I have had to promise to take 
poor Mabel back to town,” he said, and Julia and I both 
nodded. 

“Be kind to her,” she said gently, and I knew better 
than ever how sure she must be, how rich in her possession 
of his allegiance. 

“Then”—I walked away, heard his one word, “good¬ 
bye,” and the light sound of his retreating footsteps. 


Julia 89 

We did not see him again except, just as we reached 
the motor, for a hasty glimpse as he helped the now beam¬ 
ingly arch Mabel into the restaurant-car. 

Julia, before she folded herself in the silence that lasted 
till we reached the gates of King’s Camel, said two words: 
“Poor Mabel.” 


CHAPTER V 
[ i ] 


W E seemed to me, Julia and I, those three days at 
King’s Camel before that second telegram came, 
to have been away for years, and I, of course, realised that 
this feeling must, in her, he far stronger than it was in me. 

I remember staring at the flowers in the sunk garden 
and wondering that they had not advanced further than 
they had, and it struck me as odd that Sandra should be 
wearing the same lime-coloured jumper I thought so ill- 
suited to her queer, pale face. 

“What has happened to you, Gray ?” the Princess asked 
me the second evening, as we sat by the fire made so pleas¬ 
ant by a sudden cold rain. And that seemed to me to be 
really about the limit of absurdity. That they should 
think that the things that had happened had happened 
to me! 

And yet it was natural, for no one could have appeared 
more highly serene than Julia. There was about her a 
new radiance, but apparently only I could see it, and she 
had always been so quiet a woman that her sweetly brood¬ 
ing silence was nothing new to them. 

“What should have happened, Princess V 9 1 asked lazily, 
listening to the rain lashing the windows. 

“My dear,” she rippled in Italian, “that is more than 
I can tell you, but I know that you have had some sort 
of experience. You have changed.” After a pause, she 
went on shrewdly raking me with the unblemished blue 
90 


Julia 


91 


fire of her eyes: “You know more; you are wiser.” 
Which, of course, in a way I was, for inadequate though 
my description of it has been, what I had witnessed was 
a tremendous and most unusual thing. 

“That old villain Salop,” she continued, as I only 
smiled at her, “is he in it for anything?” 

“For nothing.” 

“But—whom else did you see in Paris, Grigetto ?” 

“The doctor,” I returned, “and two nuns.” 

“Oh, Gray,” she cried, in mock alarm, “never! Not a 
nun! What would your beautiful mother have said ?” 

“My beautiful mother would never have asked me ques¬ 
tions, Principesse”—which was not strictly true, but did 
pretty well as an answer. 

“Old Fan,” as Mrs. Cripps called her, was a more con¬ 
ventional-mannered woman than Amber Scarletta (what a 
name the gods had, after all her vicissitudes, bestowed on 
the little old lady!), but she was quite as hent on finding 
out what she wanted to know, and it appeared that she, too, 
had noticed a certain something about me that needed 
elucidation. 

“You are quite well, Mr. McFadden?” she began. (She 
was the only one of the tribe who took my delicacy as a 
normal matter for conversation.) 

“Quite, thanks, Lady Ives. . . .” 

“Ah! You seem a little—unusual,” she replied, after 
a pause; “Amber and I both thought so.” 

I was not without adroitness in my reply. “Ah, yes, 
so the Princess told me herself, but if there is really any¬ 
thing unusual in my manner since I arrived here, may it 
not be that, my first natural timidity having worn off, I 
have simply reverted to my normal state ?” 


92 Julia 

And she was bound to admit the possible truth of the 
hypothesis. 

Questioning is a game that can be played on two sides, 
and I very much wished to find out what she might think 
of Sandra’s refusing young Lavington, so I asked her, and 
found that she was indeed, as the girl had told me, in a 
fearful stew about it. “It is outrageous,” she told me 
squarely. “She has grossly encouraged poor Godfrey, 
and there is no excuse for her, whatever Julia may say. 
A blind person must have seen what he wanted, and 
Sandra led him on in a way that would have been con¬ 
sidered disgraceful in my day-” 

“Oh no, Lady Ives, not disgraceful!” 

“Yes, Mr. McFadden, it’s the right word. Of course 
the child has been so spoilt by her mother that she is not 
altogether to blame, but-” 

“You all say that—about the spoiling,” I mused aloud. 
“Even the Princess-” 

“Amber is a wonderful woman, and I am very fond of 
her, but she would have spoilt Julia, if Julia had ever been 
spoilable,” was her answer, her hard, weather-beaten face 
softening more, I realised, by the thought of the Princess 
than by that of Julia. 

“Have you known the Princess long?” I asked, and to 
my amazement she looked embarrassed. 

“You forget,” she said, coughing, “that my husband and 
I are first cousins. Naturally, I knew his first wife. . . .” 

Sandra, who came in as she spoke, gave a little 
laugh. 

“Steppy darling,” she exclaimed, “are you telling Gray 
the Romantic Story ?” 

Her face was full of something I could classify only 





Julia 93 

as malign mischief, and Lady Ives rose without a word 
and, hurrying clumsily to the door, left us alone. 

The girl laughed, and sat down. “Don’t you know 
about her ?” 

It was to me inconceivable that there should, about 
Lady Ives, be anything of the kind implied by her step- 
granddaughter’s voice, to know, and I shook my head. 

“Oh, it’s nothing very exciting—for one of this family 
—it’s only that she was over fifty when Poodle married 
her, and she’d been pining for him since she was seven¬ 
teen. A fact, Grigetto, so you needn’t look like that. 
Fancy ‘Old Fan’ pining for any one.” 

“You are a wonderful family,” I returned, “there’s 
nothing I can’t believe of you.” 

But it was hard to realise Lady Ives—I have to this 
day no idea what her maiden name was—as the victim of 
a hopeless passion. I suppose men will never learn that 
plainness or even raw-boned awkwardness, are not safe¬ 
guards for a woman’s heart. 

“Your grandfather and the Princess had been married,” 
I said, after a moment’s thought, “eight years or so when 
I first knew them, and that is nearly forty years ago.” 

“Exactly. He was brought up, after Great-grand¬ 
mother Ives’s death, by Steppy’s people, so they were 
practically cradle-friends. Then Poodle of course went 
to school, and Cambridge, and she lived on horseback for 
a little matter of say forty years and let concealment prey 
on her leathern cheek (the legend goes she refused a 
curate), and—I suppose.dreamt of the fascinating Poodle 
every night.” 

The story didn’t seem to me to be particularly funny, 
and I said so. She shrugged her shoulders. 


94 


Julia 


“Oh, I know. You’re right, of course. I’m in a filthy 
mood, and when I am I always say things in horribly had 
taste,” she conceded indifferently, “there’s a vulgar streak 
in me . . .” 

At the same time she looked ill, and oddly haggard for 
so young a creature. 

“Anything really wrong, Sandruccia ?” 

She rose, looking down at me with a smile of remorse. 
“Don’t worry your kind heart about me, nice man,” she 
replied, “I am a beast, and don’t deserve it. Ho, there’s 
nothing really wrong, it’s just that I am bored, bored, 
bored, and sick to death of—of everything.” 

Hot a new phrase on young lips, but there was in her 
face and manner a concentrated bitterness that alarmed 
me. “They’ve been tormenting you about Lavington,” I 
suggested. 

“Oh, him! Ho, Gray, they weren’t really so very keen, 
though it would have been ‘suitable,’ and when they’d all 
told me that I was a flirt and a hussy they shut up. Of 
course Mummy didn’t scold me,” she added, her face 
softening, “she never does, but—she was grieved.” 

“And it hurts you to grieve her,” I suggested, with a 
thought of Freud in my mind. 

She saw through me and laughed. “After my repres¬ 
sions, you mean, are youAgain her face changed, the 
delicate lip-muscles twitching. “I do love Mummy,” she 
cried, in a tense undertone. “She is an angel, and I love 
her, but—I am not a child, and I can’t pretend to be one.” 

“Your mother is too wise to want you to be a child— 
and still less could she endure your 'pretending to be one, 
Sandra.” 

“Ha, you don’t know! Heither does she, for that mat- 


Julia 


95 

ter, but she wants to think, and feel, and live, for me, 
and—it can’t be done. I am myself, and no* more like 
Mother than if I’d never seen her. I’m a freak, a soul 
strayed into the wrong body. . . .” 

I disliked this parrot cry, and felt myself growing cold 
and unsympathetic. “You are, in your egoism, and ruth¬ 
lessness,” I answered, “exactly like the men of your 
family.” 

She stared. “You can’t mean father ?” 

“Ho, I mean the Duke and Poodle, of course. How 
go away, Sandra, you’ve made me show as bad taste as 
your own. I’m ashamed of myself.” 

She loped out of the room, knees bent, head poked for¬ 
ward, and I went and confessed to Julia that I had told 
her daughter that her grandfather and old uncle were 
egoists. 

Julia stared mildly at me over the rose-bush she was 
clipping. “Oh, Gray,” she cried, “how could you?” 

“Lord knows. Wasn’t it awful of me ?” 

She clashed her big shears softly, and nibbled the tip 
of her left-hand gardening-glove. “Yes, I—I always 
hoped she wouldn’t ever know it, and now you’ve told 
her!” 

A small matter, but it surprised me, for I had never 
dreamt that she realised the hardness that underlay the 
charm of the two old men. . . . 

Mrs. Cripps, who had come back for a night on her way 
to stay with some friends a few miles away, had a shot 
at me an hour later. I met her on the landing near the 
Bernini Psyche brought from Rome in the ’30’s by the 
Duke’s father. “Like this thing?” she drawled, staring 
at it through her detestable single glass. 


Julia 


96 

I did not, and said so in one short word. 

“Ho more do I. Like a corn-flower ‘shape.’ ” 

Then she turned to me with unexpected sharpness. 
“What on earth has come over you, Mr. McFadden?” 

“In what way ?” 

“Ah, that’s what I want to know. Poodle and I be¬ 
lieve you have fallen in love with Julia. Have you?” 
She was, in her bland impertinence, abominable to me, 
but I kept my temper, and, telling her shortly that she 
and Ives were mistaken in their assumption, went on to 
my room where Sam was waiting to massage my foot. 

I could feel Mrs. Cripps’s eyes on me as I walked, less 
nimbly than usual, up the slippery oak stairs—I always 
limp badly when I am mentally disturbed—and before 
I reached the top she said quietly, “I beg your pardon, 
Mr. McFadden. I was silly to make such a joke, and 
Poodle never said a word about it.” 

I turned and bowed, and went on. 

“Sam,” I said to the dear old fellow, as he squatted 
in front of me, my ugly foot in his hands, “I should like 
to go to Bakersville for awhile.” 

“Yes, Mas’ Gray, Bakersville’s the place for we-all. 
Good ’Merican coffee with cream, and pop-overs, and 
cream-chicken-” 

“Yes. And plain, busy people resting in the evening 
in their front porches, with fans, and lemonade, and 
banjos-” 

“Beckon old Miss Carrie’d give her eye-teeth to see 
us, too, Mas’ Gray-” 

“She hasn’t had any eye-teeth for thirty years, old man, 
but she’d be glad to see us. ...” 

For some reason I was homesick; with that most pitiable 





Julia 


97 

homesickness, that for a home that has for ever gone. I 
wanted not Bakersville, as I realised it must, with the 
march of years, have become, but the little white and 
green town of my childhood and youth, all a-rustle in the 
summer with elm-leaves, all white and glistening with 
snow in the winter, a place of home-staying people, crude 
and friendly; I wanted to go to the Browning Club, sit¬ 
ting down to tea-parties that were really lavish and de¬ 
licious suppers; I wanted to see Mr. Carter, and old 
Doctor Weiss, and Lem Norton “squirting their hoses” 
on their front lawns in the evening, and the ladies of the 
town doing their own marketing on State Street, on foot 
and be-basketed, or driven in their buggies by their hired 
men. Peaches at ten cents a basket the size of an ordinary 
waste-paper basket, tomatoes as hard as oranges, and full 
of juice; fireworks against the evening sky on the fourth 
of July, circus processions splashing through the mud, or 
enveloped in a cloud of dust, the calliope booming; straw 
rides in winter, girls and boys packed like sardines in flat 
sledges filled with clean straw, singing part-songs, and 
eating molasses candy; even Church, the little Episcopal 
church that had bored me, and to which I had gone only 
from a sense of duty. 

All these departed things I suddenly wanted, and I 
told Sam so. 

Possibly every man and woman who has left his or her 
early home knows these sentimental and emotional out¬ 
breaks ; they do not last long, but they give one a knot in 
one’s chest. “I’m an infernal fool, Sam—if I have to 
maunder about America why don’t I stay there? Who 
forced me to live in Rome ?” 

The old darkey looked up at me, his mournful African 


98 


Julia 


eyes full of understanding. “Lordy, Mas’ Gray,” lie 
answered gently, “that ain’ no ’nfernal foolishness, that’s 
jes’ being human. What the heart ain’ got the heart sighs 
for, like it says in the Bible.” 

I didn’t correct him, and went down to dinner still in 
my fit of depression. 

Just as I was giving my arm to Julia a man brought 
me a telegram, and I knew what it contained before I 
had opened it. “Julia,” I said, “this is from home.” 

“From Borne, Gray ?” 

“No, from America.” And it was. It was signed 
Franklin, and said that my aunt, Miss Carrie Sanders, 
had died ten days before, and asked me, as sole legatee, 
to come at once. And suddenly I felt it to be an unfair 
thing that a man who for twenty-five years had lived in 
Borne should, because of some stupid legal technicality, be 
obliged to travel those thousands of miles to a town where 
nearly every one he had known was dead or gone away, 
and where he would of a certainty be bored and irritated 
at every turn. 

“Oh, Gray, I am sorry,” Julia said as she handed the 
wire back to me. “Will you have to go ?” 

“Must, I’m afraid. Franklin is a long-headed old fellow 
and wouldn’t have asked me to come if it hadn’t been 
necessary.” 

Only later, when I was in fact sitting on the old front 
porch of my aunt’s desolate house, did I remember my fit 
of sentimentalism that afternoon, and its ridiculous melt¬ 
ing away like mist on the receipt of the telegram. 

I left the next day, miserable at leaving Julia, surpris¬ 
ingly sorry to leave the Princess and her charming Prince, 
parting with sincere regret even with Sandra, Lady Ives, 


Julia 


99 

and Poodle. Solitary people are given this devastating 
quality of rapid and intense absorption into the lives of 
strangers real and comparative, and I have often been 
close to tears on saying good-bye to some happy group 
who doubtless never again gave me more than the most 
casual thought. Having no ties, and being able to roam 
wherever one likes, constitutes a queer kind of bondage, 
after all. 

Julia and I parted at the little station where she had 
insisted on accompanying me. I can still see her stand¬ 
ing there in the clear morning light, a well-poised, grace¬ 
fully stately figure in dark blue, a big garden hat, quite 
unsuited to a coat and skirt, casting a shadow on her face. 

“Why,” I asked out of real curiosity, “do you wear a 
flowery hat like that with a tailor-made suit ?” 

“How funny you are! Well, because when I go home 
I can tear off the jacket, and work in the garden in my 
jumper, which the hat does suit, see ?” 

I saw. I saw that her preoccupations in the matter of 
clothes were all for her private life. What might be 
thought of her hat at the station did not matter a pin 
to her. 

And suddenly I thought of “Jim.” 

“Julia!” 

“Yes, Gray?” 

“How are things ?” 

She smiled. “All right, dear friend.” 

“You are a wonder.” 

“Ho, I’m a bit slow, that’s all, and then I have a good 
deal of self-control, you know.” 

“Aren’t you afraid,” I persisted, “of its—the self-con¬ 
trol—wearing a bit thin after a while ?” 


100 Julia 

For a minute she kept silent, trying with her inborn 
honesty to find the exact truth. 

“I—I hope not, Gray,” she said finally. 

We stood by my luggage till the train had whistled. 

“My dear,” I took her kind, faithful hands and kissed 
them, “I hope that it won’t be the self-control that wears 
thin-” 

“You mean you hope I don’t really love him V 9 

“I suppose I do, Julia.” 

“Don’t hope that, Grigetto,” she returned as Peter took 
my bags in and stood back for the inrush of the train, 
“even if I must suffer, I would not lose what I have got. 
I feel whole and rich now.” 

Whole and rich! 

All the way to London I thought over the phrase and 
the humility of spirit that had given her the feeling they 
expressed. To have so little, and yet so much. She had 
always in her quiet, inconspicuous way been a giver and 
not a taker, and now she believed that she had been given 
a great thing in having the love of a man she had known 
less than two hours, and whose name she did not know. 

It seemed to me amazingly and profoundly touching. 
Her absolute “goodness,” in the circumscribed sense ap¬ 
plied to women, was a thing as little to be feared for as 
the crashing of the midday sun from the sky, but what I 
should have trembled for, if their madness had not taken 
the extraordinary course it had, was her peace of mind. 

I also found myself harbouring an absurd tenderness 
for his peace. In view of Mabel, and certain things he 
had said, I knew him to be far from an anchorite, and 
he had the invaluable aid of a work to which he was pas¬ 
sionately attached. “He’ll go and explore tributaries of 



Julia 


101 

his river,” I told myself, “and draw maps, and write up 
what he sees, and kill things, and physical jobs will make 
him sweat. . . . That is much, and she has nothing, ex¬ 
cept Sandra and . . (I regret to say that I mentally 
called Colonel Vine-Innes a stuffed shirt), “but yet—I 
pity him as much as I do her. Sam, I 7 ve got softening 
of the brain.” Sam grinned. 

“You get all right in good old Bakersville, sir,” he re¬ 
turned. He himself was full of delight over the prospect 
of Bakersville, and I had not told him of my despicable 
volte face. 

We stayed two days in London, and I rather hoped I 
might meet Jim, but I did not, though one evening in a 
restaurant I thought I saw him in the distance. As I 
went out, I passed the man I had mistaken for him, and 
was amused to see that he was very much occupied with a 
“Mabel” who might, so great was the resemblance of her 
expression and gesture to those of that unromantic 
Ariadne, have been her sister. The man, who had had 
enough champagne though he seemed not to know it, had 
grizzled hair and deep-set eyes, not unlike Jim’s, the car¬ 
riage of his head was strikingly like the other man’s, and 
so was the line of his jaw, and the way his lower teeth 
showed when he laughed, but he was, I saw, self-indulgent, 
weak, if not worse. 

He glowered up as I passed, and apparently something 
in my expression caught his attention, for he frowned at 
me, and said to his Mabel something I knew, though I did 
not catch his words, to be unflattering to me. 

On the steamer I was very sick, and when I recovered 
found myself to be pining, not for King’s Camel, or even 
my quiet and beautiful rooms in the Palazzo Alberobello 


102 


Julia 


in Rome, but, with the lack of consistency common to all 
victims of this idiotic kind of emotionality, for the big 
room at Monreale that 1 had taken and furnished three 
years before, and from whose little marble terrace I could 
see the incomparable golden plain of Palermo. 

“Let’s go to Sicily, Sam,” I suggested one wintry, windy 
day when I was forced by the ship’s motion to stay in bed. 

“You laffin’ at me, Mas’ Gray,” he returned tranquilly, 
brushing hard at my coat. But I wasn’t. 

blew York, where I had not been for many years, dis¬ 
tressed me. It seemed incoherent, unstable, and without 
romance—which, of course, it cannot be; all great cities 
are full of romance. 

I saw my publisher in a palace that I felt might in 
a couple of hundred years achieve real beauty. I looked 
up two old friends, and then, one bright, sunny day, old 
Sam and I set off to Bakersville. 

[ H ] 

It was less changed than I had feared; even, in a subtle 
way, reverted a little from what it had been seventeen 
years before, to what it had been when I was a boy. This 
was because many of the “smart set,” as they horribly 
called it, had retired in disgust from its inelegant purlieus, 
and begun new phases somewhere further east or further 
west. It was, I discovered, only the Middle West that 
was unendurable, California and the Atlantic States hav¬ 
ing apparently joined hands. 

There were new houses, new streets even, and in the 
old quarter, which in my days was simply all there was 
to the residential part of it, the modest frame and frame- 


Julia 103 

and-plaster houses looked old-fashioned and shabby under 
the budding elms. 

Here I found several families I remembered, chiefly 
oldish people whose children had gone east—or west— 
for reasons of social advancement. Settled for a month in 
my aunt’s pleasant cottage with her two maids and Sam, 
I sought these old acquaintances out and found that to 
them I was still “a friend,” still more or less “Martha 
Sanders’s son Gray.” 

It was, after all my forebodings, pleasant, and my 
vanity was undeniably soothed by the appreciation shown 
by these kind people, of my books and my supposedly pro¬ 
digious successes “abroad.” These elderly and old men 
and women, accepting the being left by their children with 
a certain plaintive pride, ending their faded lives in their 
faded homes, doing each other, in a matter-of-fact way, 
sundry kindnesses, listening to each other’s old stories, 
reading each other bits from the latest letter from Mamie, 
or Bob, in Los Angeles or Hew York, innocently and 
resignedly making the best of things, touched me. 

“I should like to see Marne, Mrs. Potter,” I said one 
evening as, replete with the creamed chicken and waffles 
I had so often longed for—yes, and the soda-biscuit that 
Julia called scones, and boiled coflee thick with cream— 
I sat with two of these unsuspecting old derelicts on their 
side-porch, listening to a gramophone across the street 
playing a tango. “She must be—let me see—about forty- 
two ?” 

Mr. Potter gave the sardonic laugh I remembered as 
being rather characteristic of the men of the town. 

“Good thing she can’t hear you say that, my boy! 
Mary grows younger every year, doesn’t she, Mother ?” 


104 


Julia 


“Now, Mr. Potter,” the old lady returned, “what do 
you want to give her away for ?” 

“Well,” he drawled (so differently from Eva Cripps’ 
drawl, I thought), “I don’t know’s I sh’d want to do that, 
hut Gray’s an old friend, Maggie . . .” 

Passionately I wanted to he an old friend, as the quiet 
days drifted past, as silently as dead leaves on a still 
stream ... I even drank—or ate—a chocolate ice-cream 
soda at Evans and Mockeridge’s State Street drug-store, 
in silent tribute to those I had revelled in as a child. It 
was pretty nasty, hut I enjoyed it in a way. 

My old aunt had, it turned out, been lured, during her 
last years, into some rather wild investments, and it took 
Dave Eranklin and me hours of hard work to set her affairs 
in order. “I hadn’t an idea,” Eranklin told me, as he 
sat on the edge of his writing-table looking, so long and 
lank and flexible was he, like something to be sold by the 
yard, “not an idea. Gray, that the old lady was speculating. 
Some one oughter’ve put me wise about it.” (He was a 
sincere lover of Dante, by the way.) 

“Probably told no one,” I returned. “She was always 
rather secretive.” 

“Yes-sirree,” I remembered the word, and it “sounded 
good” to me as Eranklin himself said about some word 
of mine. 

“Why say, Gray,” he burst out once, “what yer trying 
to pull all that eighteen-eighty slang on me for ?” 

And I felt humbled, for I had been producing for his 
benefit all the odds and ends of my boyhood’s jargon I 
could remember. If I’d have told him he would have 
thought it pathetic, and that I should have hated (though 
I knew it to be true). 


Julia 


105 


So I did not explain. 

A man named Milton Hopkins, with whom I had for a 
year or so gone to the old grey plaster Academy with its 
Doric pillars, under the huge trees in Lincoln Street (now 
Lincoln Avenue West), drove me to the cemetery one 
evening. He had a pair of fine bay horses. 

“Ho flivvers for me,” he declared; “my father burst 
himself twice on horse-flesh, and I ? ve done it myself once. 
Say, Gray, aren’t they dandy ?” 

They were. 

It was a pleasant evening, rather misty and cool; off 
towards the river, just flushed with crimson, the sun was 
sliding down the sky. I had not much to say, for I was 
on my way to see my father’s and mother’s graves, and 
that of my little sister, whose name, incredible as it 
sounds, had been Seraph. It was an old name in my 
father’s family, and though my mother, I believe, had 
thought it slightly sacrilegious, she had, of course, agreed 
to his wish of giving it to their second child. 

My old aunt was buried near them, and the back of the 
dusty buggy was full of flowers I had cut in her garden, 
and others given me by Mrs. Potter and Mrs. Pranklin, 
for the graves. 

The road was very straight, edged with apple-trees, 
thick with ochre dust. 

Milt Hopkins had been the son of the chief grocer of 
the town, and when I came back from college he had 
grown apart from me, and I knew that he had not for¬ 
gotten this. I suppose I seemed to him a rather grand 
person. He was fat and lazy, with a strawberry-like nose, 
and a flea-bitten moustache, as he himself called it. 

“Changed a good deal round about here, I guess you 


106 


Julia 


find it?” he asked me once, hut when I said, “Yes,” he 
did not pursue the subject. A comfortably silent man. 

The great flat cemetery, with its iron fence and gates, 
looked desolate enough, after my years in Italy, and I 
wished I need not go further, but I knew that I could not, 
without shocking every one who had known her, go away 
without “visiting my mother’s grave.” 

The only time I had performed this pious, but to me 
quite senseless, pilgrimage, the mounds and the low grave¬ 
stones were hidden by a thick fleece of snow. How every¬ 
thing was visible, and it was very unbeautiful. 

Hopkins waited for me in the buggy, and I turned up 
a dry, ochre path, on which the gravel seemed coarse and 
harsh, to the old lot that my grandfather McFadden—bad, 
delightful old man—had bought when he first settled in 
the town. 

Yes, there they lay, Grandpa and Grandma McFadden, 
Grandma and Uncle Fred Sanders (I have no idea why 
they were not buried in their own place, at the far side of 
the cemetery, but they weren’t), my father, John Ram- 
port McFadden, and my mother. 

“My headstone must be exactly like your father’s, 
Gray,” my mother had often told me. “You must not 
fail to see to it.” 

I had done my duty, and there were the two stones, 
twin in everything but age and its inevitable marks. My 
father, my dear mother’s “Mr. McFadden,” had died 
when I was six; I could barely remember him, and but for 
one occasion, and that one, oddly enough, I thought as I 
set about my task of decorating the graves, was when my 
poor little sister Seraph was about a week old. 

I was sitting on a stool near the cradle when he came? 


Julia 


107 


into the room and took the child up and dandled her. 
My mother reproved him. “Now, Mr. McFadden,” I 
remember her saying from the bed, so intimately connected 
with all three of them, “if you turn her upside down like 
that she will throw up all over you.” 

Not a romantic memory, hut I could still see my father 
throw hack his head and laugh, and the way the unshaded 
gaslight gleamed in the varnished red cave of his mouth, 
and on his untidy reddish hair. They had adored each 
other, John Ramport McFadden and Martha S. McFad¬ 
den, his wife. They had, I reflected, meant love, and 
respect, and passion, and home, and eternity to each other, 
and now all that was left of them was these ugly, neg¬ 
lected grave-stones, and, scarcely less lonely and unlovely, 
me. The few roses I put on my mother’s mound, some 
red geraniums on my father’s and Aunt Carrie’s. On poor 
little Seraph’s (Mrs. Potter had told me the evening be¬ 
fore of her funeral, when she was only two months old, 
“smothered in lilies-of-the-valley and as pretty as a wax 
doll, Gray, and your poor mother crying her eyes out, and 
you very busy with a spotted wooden horse Dr. Weiss had 
given you. It was a sweet funeral”), on Seraph’s grave 
I laid a knot of flowers, and some sweet-smelling vine (the 
English word “creeper” I find detestable) that grew under 
my aunt’s kitchen window. 

My grandmother’s and grandfather’s graves I did not 
decorate. They had been dead so long. 

But standing there, sad and conscious of my utter 
solitude, I suddenly remembered a dark cupboard, under 
a book-case in my Grandma Sanders’s sitting-room. In 
this cupboard stood a grey crock with a cover, and in the 
crock—I swear that as the memory came back to me I 


108 


Julia 


could feel the cold handle of the cover in my larcenous 
hand, and smell, as I raised it, the intoxicating, mysteri- 
ous*smell of fresh doughnuts. . . . 

“Milt,” I asked as we trotted swiftly back to the town, 
“do you ever eat doughnuts, nowadays ?” 

“Do I eat doughnuts! Mrs. Hopkins makes ’em so’s 
they melt in your mouth, Gray. Will you stop in and 
sample ’em? Must he doughnut day,” he added with a 
chuckle, “because it wasn’t, yesterday.” 

He was a prosperous man, and his son had a car that 
I was told was some peach, but he took me in by the side 
door, direct to the sitting-room, and his wife, who was 
playing Rachmaninoff, bounced off her stool, hand out¬ 
stretched. 

“Why, Gray McFadden,” she cried, “is that you! 
Come right in and sit down. Say, Milt,” she added 
archly, “he don’t know me from Adam. Gave me a glass 
alley once, too, up at the Academy in Professor Baxter’s 
time. Shame on you, Gray, for an Eyetalian!” 

I did not remember her, but when she told me that she 
had been Echo Switzer, I had a faint vision of a little girl 
with red stockings, who always brought quince jelly sand¬ 
wiches to school in her lunch-basket. 

The kind people made me stay to supper, and Echo, as 
I was forced, by their innocent assumption that I would 
do so, to call her, put on an apron and went into her per¬ 
fectly beautiful kitchen, and cooked one of the best meals 
I have ever eaten. Spring chickens broiled, creamed pota¬ 
toes, fresh peas, coffee, soda biscuits, brandied peaches— 
Heaven only knows what were all the delicious things of 
which I greedily and fearlessly partook. 

“She can make the new Frenchy kind of stuff, too,” 


Julia 


109 


Hopkins told me, “but it seemed to me you’d like some 
real grub after living on Spaghetti and bananas all these 
years. . . .” 

“Real grub for me for ever,” I declared, as firmly as 
truthfully. “What on earth is this salad made of, Echo ?” 

[ in ] 

It was that same evening that Julia’s letter—a letter 
that seemed to come from another planet—reached me. 
Sam, whom I found sitting in the porch, smoking, handed 
itjto me as I came in. “Reckon it’s from Miss Julia, sir,” 
he began, and then, as he switched on the light, “Why, 
what’n the Lord’s name you-all’s been up to, Mas’ Gray ?” 

I had, for a few hours, found the way back, “the sweet 
way back to childhood’s land,” as Brahm’s lovely song has 
it, guided by the superficially unlikely Milt Hopkins, and 
the old darkey’s wise eyes had seen it. 

“I’ve been eating honey-dew, Sam,” I told him, “get 
me my slippers, will you . . . ?” 

And then in my aunt’s funny little, be-matted sitting- 
room I saw and read Julia’s letter. 

“Dear Gray,” it began, roughly written with less than 
her usual care, “When are you coming back ? Back here 
to King’s Camel, I mean, not to Italy. Grigetto, I need 
you. It has worn thin—so thin, I feel at times that if I 
can’t go to him and hear him speak I shall die. It sounds 
absurd, but it is true. I can’t go to him, of course, but I 
am ill from it all, and I need you to talk to about him. 
I am alone here, Humphrey is in town, with Sandra; 
Erances is at Bury St. Edmunds with her niece (not 


110 


Julia 


Eva) ; and Poodle is in Paris with Dukie and Mamma 
and Muzio. I thought being alone might help, hut it 
hasn’t. I nearly cabled to you to-day. Do come. 

“Julia.” 

Then there was a postscript: 

“I am horribly selfish, I know, but it’s too much for 
me. I thought I was strong, but I am not. I’m weak, 
weak, weak, and I need my friend.” 

That was all, hut it was enough to jerk me back into the 
present with a shock that hurt. 

It was, I thought, a pretty bad world, when women like 
Julia have to be helpless in the power of an emotion that 
could have no possible fulfilment. 

It was, it must be understood, the first time I had ever 
known her quiet self-control to slip, the self-control so 
perfect that it seemed to be merely the perfection of good 
breeding. And I was alarmed. 

“Sam,” I called to the kitchen, “we’re going back to 
London to-morrow. Pack up.” 

His old face loomed dimly in the dusk of the unlighted 
dining-room. “Lordy, Mas’ Gray—nothing wrong with 
Miss Julia, is ’ere?” 

“Ho. But she wants to see me.” 

He nodded and went upstairs, reflecting, I knew, that 
he had always known that I should have married Julia. 

The next day I said good-bye to every one I knew in 
the place, took one more look of all that was left of the 
home where I had lived those long, long years of my 
youth—(two old elms at the side of the miniature Sara- 


Julia 


111 


cenic-Norman castle built in 1900 .by tbe man wbo bad 
bought the house and torn it down)—signed one or two 
papers at Franklin’s office, and we took the night train for 
New York. Arrived there I cabled Julia that I was com¬ 
ing, went to bed at eleven o’clock, and at three waked 
up in an agony of pain and with high fever. 

Appendicitis: the icy perfection of a hospital, the vague 
passing of time, a very slow convalescence, and then, when 
I was allowed to see my letters, a cablegram from Julia, 
dated a fortnight earlier: 

“Dearest Gray, Do not come. Going Norway. All 
well.—J.” 


CHAPTER VI 
[ i ] 


I T was October before I saw any one of the King’s 
Camel people again, for I spent the summer on tbe 
St. Lawrence with two men I had known in Rome, and 
who were working up there in the big woods in connection 
with the manufacture of paper. 

We lived in an enchanting—almost enchanted—“log- 
cabin” that could have accommodated twenty people, and 
whose exquisite comfort, skilfully kept this side of lux¬ 
ury, combined with the magnificent air and scenery, was 
a revelation to me. 

Our three months at Ste Angele brought healing to my 
body and, what was better, to my mind. Lying in my 
long-chair in the veranda, and later in the woods, I 
learned that the sensibility that for the last year had been 
growing in me, the instability of mental position, the 
shivering misery over small matters, had been not the 
mere effect of time on a lonely, imaginative man, but a 
positive psychical disturbance. 

I had, for a long time, been tormented by an over-sym¬ 
pathy with the unavoidable pain linked up with every 
human life, and whether this unwholesome condition had 
worked on my physical health, or whether my bad physical 
health had thus affected my psychosis, I did not know. 
And now I was better and saner. 

In any case, it was delicious to lie there in that air, to 
watch the great river sliding round Pointe Ste Angele, to 
112 


Julia 113 

hear the birds sing, and the sound of the wood-cutter at 
work in the shadowy forest. 

Sam rejoiced audibly in everything. It was to his 
faithful heart almost a miracle to see me eating again, 
sleeping in my chair, or walking, with a visible lessening 
of my limp, in the fringes of the wood, or on the banks 
of the river. 

He was very anxious for me to begin the book that 
should have come out that spring, and which I had been 
unable to write, and every morning when I came on the 
veranda for breakfast—Maddox and Emery were up and 
away by five—I found, neatly arranged on a steady little 
table near my chair, all the things necessary to a writer 
of stories at his job—notebooks, block, two fountain-pens 
ready for action, blotting-paper, the Thesaurus of the ex¬ 
cellent Rogers family, and—I am a wretched speller—a 
small English dictionary. 

“Eine day, Mas’ Gray,” the good old fellow would begin, 
as I ate my cereal drowned in thick yellow cream; “you-all 
looking so rested—reckon this’ll be a good day to begin 
that book of ours. . . 

But I did not work. I could not. 

Instead, I wrote letters; dozens of letters, some of them 
to people I had not seen for years, for with returning 
health and the normality of rested nerves I felt a friendly 
interest in everybody and everything. 

Also, I made plans. It was plain to me that it was 
bad for me to live in the almost unbroken solitude that 
I had sunk into during the last two years in Rome and 
Sicily; it was opening the doors to the morbidity that 
had been growing on me. Henceforth I would not use 
my rooms as a shell in which to hide; I would go to see 


114 


Julia 


people, and let them in when - they came to see me. And— 
I would have people stay with me, a thing I have v always 
disliked. The ideal life of seeing people when one wishes 
to, but never when one doesn’t, suddenly appeared to me 
to mean “never when they wanted to see me,” and I would 
change all that. 

“Sam,” I remember telling him one day, “we are going 
to have some dinner-parties next winter.” 

“Good work, Mas’ Gray!” 

“And Concetta must get the bedrooms all in order, for 
I’m going to invite people to stay with us.” 

“Hooray, Mas’ Gray. Miss Julia coming?” 

“I hope so. Yes, we’ll have Colonel and Mrs. Vine- 
Innes, Miss Sandra, Mr. and Mrs. Emery, Mr. Maddox 
and his sister, Professor Sandbach—oh, lots of people.” 

He was delighted, and begged me to write at once to 
Concetta, my housekeeper, to begin to prepare for the 
great doings. 

“You gotta get that book done first, though, sir,” he 
urged. “Cost a lotta money, all these parties.” 

(I have not tried to reproduce his soft accent because 
during those lonely, lazy days in Canada I re-read one 
of W. H. Howells’s fine novels and found even his skilful 
rendering of the Southern girls’ accent a great bore.) 

Sam was born in ’51 in South Carolina, and could 
neither read nor write, though this was a secret that we 
jealously kept from all modernly-brought-up servants. 

In July, Emery’s wife and daughter came up from 
Boston, bringing half a dozen young people with them, 
and the quiet had fled, leaving, however, in its place some¬ 
thing quite as wholesome for me—the pleasant noise of 
normal, healthy boys and girls on holiday. 


Julia 115 

They were, luckily for me as well as for them, all too 
young to have been hurt by the war, the boys being 
Harvard “men,” and the girls just on the point of “com¬ 
ing out.” 

“Hice bunch of buds they’ll make, won’t they ?” Maddox 
asked me the evening of their arrival, and I agreed that 
they would. Eud is a pretty name for the young girl just 
appearing in the world. 

[ ii ] 

While I was at Ste Angele I received from England 
and Italy four letters, which I will quote in full, as they 
explain in different ways the march of events at King’s 
Camel. 


“King’s Camel, 

“July 2. 

“Deae Geay, 

“I do hope you are quite all right by this time. I did 
not receive poor old Sam’s cablegram until the 10th of 
June, owing to Mrs. Weybridge’s suddenly wanting to go 
to Stockholm, but Humphrey wired at once to the hos¬ 
pital, as you know. How, as to why I haven’t written 
since that note I scrawled on the yacht at Christiania. 
That is, dear Grigetto, I did write. I have written pages 
and pages to you, and then—torn them up, and dropped 
them over the side. I was, at first, so filled with one 
thought that I could not get away from it. And—what’s 
the use ? 

“Perhaps if your poor aunt hadn’t died, and you had 
stayed on with us, I shouldn’t have got to such a point. 


Julia 


116 

I suppose it’s just that having no safety-valve, I finally 
got pretty close to bursting. 

“The Weybridges’ invitation came as a real godsend, 
and the yachting has done me good, even though we came 
too early and it was cold at first, moving about like this 
from one beautiful place to another. Humphrey has been 
very good to me, and Madge W. is a dear. There were 
seven of us, the W.s, us two, darling Papa, Eva Cripps, 
and a man named Farquhar, who is most amusing. I 
think he is rather in love with Eva, but he hasn’t a 
penny. Frances is at Aix for her gout, and Sandra is 
with her, which will surprise you, but S. asked to go, as 
she wanted a change, and Frances was really pleased and 
glad to have her. I do hope they will grow to understand 
each other. 

“Sandra was awfully upset about your illness. By the 
way, Gray, I had no idea she was so fond of you. The 
day the cablegram came she went about saying to every 
one, ‘Oh, poor Grigetto! Oh the dear, kind man P and 
so on. She asked me to write her at once when I had 
had more news about you, so I sent her your note, and 
she will no doubt write to you herself. 

“I have made a discovery, Gray. That night is a very 
soothing thing. (Out of doors, of course.) I sat up on 
deck very late, as I had a cabin to myself and didn’t 
disturb any one, and the sky seemed to do me good, some¬ 
how. I didn’t much care for the Northern Lights. That 
queer, pale glare seems rather dreadful, but when our 
own stars are there I do really feel that I am being held 
up by something or some one. God, I suppose, though I 
have never liked going to church any more than you have. 
Wouldn’t it be nice to belong to a church one really loved 


Julia 


117 


to go to ? I suppose religious people do, though. If only 
children weren’t told that necessary things are a duty! It 
makes everything seem so tiresome, don’t you think? Of 
course, one tries to do what is right, and it’s the same 
thing really, only duty is such a boring word. 

“Poor Gray, I shall never forgive myself for sending 
you that silly, weak letter. And oh, you dear kind man, 
as Sandra says, to think of your leaving at once, like that I 
How lucky you didn’t get on hoard the steamer before you 
got ill! 

“When I see you I’ll try to explain the state of mind 
I was in. Can’t write it, hut I honestly believe that after 
they all went away and I wasn’t held up, like a stick in a 
bundle, by sheer closeness, I wasn’t quite sane for a day 
or two. 

“It was not, I suppose, any clever person would say, 
only that I love a man I am never to see again. I remem¬ 
ber your once calling somebody’s troubles ‘cumulative,’ 
and then you explained to me about the way poisons work. 

“Well, Gray, dear, do you know I think that, not my 
troubles, for I’ve never had any (perhaps that is one, 
after all!) but the accumulation of little lacks and little 
blanks—you know what I mean. Do you remember our 
talk on dear Poodle’s birthday night, when you asked 
me if I had ever been in love ? I remember how oddly 
you looked at me, as if you were sorry for me. 

“I daresay that if I had had a love-affair, and got over 
it as most girls do, it would have been rather like a vac¬ 
cination. But I hadn’t, I hadn’t really had anything, 
except Sandra, to stir the feelings that all the Iveses and 
the Cravenarmses have so frightfully strong, and that, the 
mother-feeling, is so different, isn’t it ? 


Julia 


118 

“The night before I wrote you I wandered round the 
outer garden all night, like a madwoman. I saw the sun 
rise for the first time in my life, and it was awful. 

“But here I am, after all, trying to explain, after saying 
I wouldn’t! 

“Write to me soon, and tell me how you are. Hum¬ 
phrey and I and dear old Dukie are here all alone. Hum¬ 
phrey has a frightful cold. He sends kind regards to you. 
When do you come hack? You will come via England, 
won’t you, for we shall all love to see you again. 

“Humphrey had to sack Hobson. It seems he has 
been quietly selling some of Humphrey’s old port, under 
our very noses. We have a Swede now, nice, but so 
dreadfully underdone-looking. His name is Oscar. All 
Swedes seem to he named Oscar. It is odd calling one’s 
butler by his Christian name, but none of us can pro¬ 
nounce his surname without making him laugh, and of 
course that won’t do! Did I tell you that Mamma and 
Muzio are going to Sicily for the winter ? Hot to Scar- 
letta, which is in ruins, but to a villa they have taken 
near by. Wasn’t it a pity that you should have been such 
a lot in Sicily without knowing that they were there? 
Mamma is so fond of you, Gray. She wishes she was 
younger, and you older, and then she would have married 
you. And now, dear Grigetto mio, good-bye. 

“Your always affectionate, 

“Julia Vine-Innes.” 

“Aix les Bains, 

“Dear Gray, “July 10. 

“I am very glad you are better. You don’t appreciate 
me, but such is my magnam—how d’you spell it?—mag- 


Julia 


119 


ninimity—that I really rather like yon. Steppy and I 
are here washing our sins away, and enjoying the gay 
sights from a distance. Aren’t yon surprised at my hav¬ 
ing come with her? If yon aren’t, then I am, but I’m 
not sorry. I was fed up with ’ome life, and yet I didn’t 
feel like going to stay with any one. Don’t much care 
for being tied to other people’s hours, and so on. So I 
invited her ladyship to bring me here, and really it works 
surprisingly well. She is frightfully busy with her cure, 
but Mrs. Frank Massingham is here with her two girls, 
and has undertaken to chaperon me—^Step-grandmother 
still believes in this defunct office—I have a pretty ‘nice 
time,’ as you and your Americans say. 

“We dance every night, but I don’t like Frenchmen 
much. They are so dreadfully ladylike. Do you remem¬ 
ber Eva’s fat swain, Dicky Fanning? He is here, but, 
as he is not alone, Steppy chooses to consider him invis¬ 
ible, which is confusing. 

“Eva has chucked him, and I believe is going on like 
anything with the Farquhar person who was on the yacht. 
Mummy liked him, but Father said he was not quite 
white. (This does not mean that he has black blood.) I, 
too, am carrying on in a mild way with a most beauteous 
youth from H’York. His name is Gwynn, and his ties 
and shirts and socks are dreams. His clothes are of 
course made in London. He is teaching me a lot of new 
steps, and we go for drives—or I could almost say flights, 
he goes so fast—in his R.-R. 

“Well, dear man, I must stop and see Steppy borne 
like an Oriental lady to her bath. Do try to grasp the 
beauties of my character, and don’t ‘scoyn’ me too much 


120 Julia 

because I can’t be like my beautiful and incomparable 
mother. 

“Yours, 

“Sandracina. 

“P.8 . 1 —I find I spelt magnanimity wrong after all. 

“P.P.S .—Preston Gwynn is, unfortunately, married.” 

“Craven Castle, Shropshire. 

“August 1. 

“My Dear McFadden, 

“You will be surprised to hear from me, but I have 
something to suggest to you. I know how attached you 
are to my family, or rather, to be exact, to the female 
members of it, and as I think I see your way to do Julia 
and Sandra a kindness, I don’t hesitate to tell you of it. 
Can’t you get some one of your Roman friends to take 
Sandra into their very delightful society this coming 
winter ? 

“I mean, can’t Sandra spend the winter with you— 
suitably chaperoned, of course, and I’d see to that if 
you’d let me—and thus, by the help of the hypothetical 
Roman, give the child a mildly exciting and dissipated 
winter ? Nothing so good for some phases of boredom and 
unmitigated frivolity, and Sandra is bored to death. 

“Neither you nor I, McFadden, is a fool, so I won’t 
pretend to think the young lady a model. If I had a 
grandson, I would not let him marry her. But she is 
Julia’s, and she is young, and she is very attractive, all 
the best of reasons for trying to do her a good turn. 

“Julia, about whom I know more than anybody, pos¬ 
sibly with the exception of yourself, is the best woman, 
bar one*of my sisters, dead long ago, 1 have ever known, 


Julia 


121 


but she and Sandra do not suit each other mentally—do 
not, I suppose the new jargon would term it, ‘react’ well 
to each other—and this fact, which the child realises, and 
which Julia, poor soul, does not, is on the point of caus¬ 
ing trouble. 

“Did you notice it ? 

“It is time for both their sakes that they should be 
separated for a while, and as Sandra seems to be fond 
of you, it seems to me that you are the man for the job, 
as one says nowadays, ugly, crude word that it is. 

“If you feel willing to undertake it, will you write to 
me here at once, without telling either of them? If the 
plan never comes off, no harm will have been done; but 
I rather think that only your agreeing will be necessary, 
and that Sandra will jump at the chance. 

“She might possibly marry an Italian—-I agree with 
you that no nicer man exists than a well-bred Roman— 
which would be an excellent thing. Englishmen now¬ 
adays are either too consequential or too neurotic for her. 

“She’s not so bad a child as my niece, Frances Ives, 
thinks, but she needs restraint, and short of a harem, or 
Spain, I believe the restraint she would have to submit 
to in a good Roman family would be the best for her. 

“As to the necessary sheep-dog, I know a lady who 
would fill the role with a dignity and charm. An old 
third or fourth cousin of mine, a widow named Amphlett, 
and her expenses, of course, would be my affair. 

“ISTow, my dear ‘Grigetto,’ if I may be allowed so to 
call you, think this over and send me your answer. 

“I trust your health is by now quite restored, and with 
kind regards, I am, yours sincerely, 

“Shropshire.” 


122 


Julia 

“Hatworth Little Hall, 

“Westmoreland. 

“Aug. 1. 

“Dear Gray, 

“Julia and tlie Brat have told me your news and I am 
delighted that it is so good, after all your bothers. What 
a nuisance that little gut is, created so far as one can see 
only for the purposes of going bad and having to be cut 
out! However—yours has joined what I suppose is now¬ 
adays the great majority of its kind, so all is well. 

“I’m on my way to Perthshire for the grouse. Stopped 
over here to see my sister, Mrs. George Christian, whom 
I think you’ve never met. A charming old woman she is, 
too. E. L. Christian, the Zingari man, is her grandson, 
and doing splendid work for England. But you don’t 
like cricket. 

“I don’t quite know why I’m writing to you, for I 
never did so before except when your poor mother died, 
and I suppose it’s because it’s a filthy day and I can’t 
go out, having a cold. Must keep fit for the glorious 
twelfth. 

“By the way, that’s what you Americans call the day 
you rebelled, isn’t it? Or is it fourth? Means grouse, 
really, you know. You’ll be glad to hear that Birthday is 
going strong. Never put my legs across a better horse. 
That imp, Sandra, driving him into the house! Re¬ 
member ? 

“My lady-wife is at the Cottage again, after her cure. 
She had a high old time with the Brat, at Aix. Seems 
there was an American there, fellow named Guenn, or 
Guiness, or something, and he vent off the deep end over 
her (Sandra, of course). Followed them to Caux, too, 


Julia 


123 


and raised hell’s delight generally. Married, he was, not 
that that makes a real difference of course, and poor Pan 
got an awful frousse about it. Sandra told me she doesn’t 
care a button for the man, but that it was such fun see¬ 
ing him go white and red. Beasts women are, particu¬ 
larly respectable ones. In the end my wife brought her 
home, and now she’s visiting some girl or other, some¬ 
where. Quite unlike Julia she is; ever notice it? 

“Julia is busy changing the garden. Has a lot of men 
in with spades and wheel-barrows. I believe she said 
she was going to have a rock garden in the old quarry. 
Remember? Norway did Julia good, she says, though 
she’s always well, bless her. Her placid disposition was 
always a great consolation to me. Quite unlike myself 
and Amber. Amber and Muzio are at Salzburg. Always 
charging about the world, those two. Going to Sicily 
in October, I believe. 

“The Duke is going strong. He is at Craven, an old 
place of his own near Wales, and his heir, fellow named 
Parker, is staying with him. I always thought it such 
a pity old Salop had no son. This chap Parker, who 
of all things on earth is a parson, is only one degree 
closer to him than I am, but I never wanted to be a 
duke; Parker is old—must be sixty—and his son is in 
the Blues. Gambles a lot, I’m told. 

“The sun has come out, so I’ll close. Have to send 
this to be forwarded. Should like to hear from you some 
time, and when you come back my Lady and I’d like to 
have you stay at the Cottage. 

“Good luck. 


“Yours ever, 

“Charles Ives.” 


Julia 


124 

The Duke’s conception of Roman society I found a 
slightly out-of-date one, but at bottom his plan seemed 
good. At least it would free Julia from the months in 
London to which I knew her to be looking forward with 
resigned dislike, and possibly because of her unexpected 
liking for me, I felt inclined to see more of Sandra. 
Mrs. Amphlett I dreaded, but not to an unbearable ex¬ 
tent, and I felt pretty sure that Donna Cesarina Monte- 
leone would be glad to have an attractive girl to take 
about. The Monteleone people were about my best friends 
in Italy, and I should never have fallen into my nefaste 
way of solitude had Piero not taken his wife to Argentina, 
two years before, for a long visit to their married sons 
who had settled there on ranches, or estancias or some¬ 
thing, as dear old Poodle would have said. 

I wrote to the Duke agreeing to his suggestion, and a 
few days later received a cablegram: “All delighted plan, 
accept joyfully.” It was signed Yine-Innes, but I knew 
that Sandra had written it, and I was very glad. 

My answer, sent by letter, explained that in order to 
spare myself the fatigue of much overland travel, I was 
sailing early in September direct to Naples, and this I 
did. 

It was a glorious autumn, a little cooler than most 
Southern autumns, and Rome, almost free of the tourists 
whom we Romanised foreigners dislike so much more than 
do the real natives, and my big shady apartment, with 
its trim garden, to which one went down a little flight of 
mossy and consequently rather perilous marble steps, 
looked very pleasant to me. 

I had been lucky in getting the place, even all these 
years before, when there was so much less competition 


Julia 


125 


and bribery in connection with dwellings in Rome than 
there is nowadays, for it possessed nearly all the delights 
dreamt of by the Northerner; it had this tiny garden 
overlooked, owing to several windows having been bricked 
in, and to the high wall of Prince Alberobello’s studio, 
only on one side; there was a well in the courtyard gar¬ 
den, and a small wall-fountain on which capered two 
shameless and delightful cherubs; I had a loggia outside 
my library; there was a big balcony outside the salone 
(“drawing-room” after all hardly expresses the great field 
of a place in which I meant Sandra to dance with golden 
youths of the ancient lineage demanded by the Duke); 
and some of the freschi were supposed to be, I am sure 
mistakenly, Guido Reni. 

Having no liking for cold feet, I had carpeted pretty 
well the whole place except the drawing-room and library, 
which had parquet floors, and little by little I had made 
the “house,” as Italian courtesy calls even the smallest of 
flats, most comfortable, not luxurious. I had one or two 
good pictures, chiefly modern: a Matthew Maris, two very 
fine Mauves, one of a blue-coated shepherd and his sheep, 
the other of a stretch of canal in winter; and a Muirhead. 
I had also a little Chinese statue of “Mercy,” a most ex¬ 
quisite Madonna-like lady with a veiled face through 
which, in some amazing way, one was able to see the di¬ 
vine sweetness of her expression. 

Then—books. Having a useful trick of picking up 
languages with little trouble, I am able to read seven or 
eight, and most of my moderate means goes for books, 
magazines, library subscriptions, and so on. 

And, so strange a thing is the human mind, so unac¬ 
countable its disregard for proportion, one of the things 


126 


Julia 


I most valued about my bouse was the fact that under its 
portico was a flower-stand, allowed by the Prince as a 
means of livelihood to an old servant. 

Whatever day of the year I came home, even in the 
middle of winter, here were flowers for me to buy, to 
choose carefully, as flower-lovers do, and then to carry 
upstairs myself and without any tiresome waiting, to “set 
up,” as Fountain said, in vases. . . . 

I selected two sunny rooms for my coming guests, re¬ 
moved the faded curtains, bought pretty linen and lace 
counterpanes, had long interviews with Pinaldo, my new 
cook, and the good Concetta, and then sat down, so to 
speak, to await the guests’ arrival. 

They were due the 25th of October, for Julia had 
taken Sandra, as she wrote me (Sandra wrote that she 
had taken Julia), to Paris for new clothes, and there had 
been a little delay. But Pome is quiet, socially, in the 
autumn, and I meant my two ladies to go through a thor¬ 
ough course of sight-seeing before their frivolities began. 

Donna Cesarina, who arrived a week after I did, was, 
as I had foreseen she would be, enchanted at the idea of 
having an excuse to go to all the balls, which she loved 
and which Piero detested; so all seemed to be well, and 
I was very pleased indeed. 

It was the 15th, I see by my note-book, I dined in 
Casa Monteleone, and saw old Mrs. Angell for the first 
time for over three years. She sat on my right at dinner. 

She was a charming old lady of the point-lace and dia¬ 
monds type, and I, of course, remembered at once that 
I knew her godson. I was anxious to keep my part of 
the pact Julia and he had made, and had no intention of 
learning his name, and after a moment’s thought I said 


Julia 127 

artfully: “By the way, I met that Amazonian godson of 
yours in the spring. How is he ?” 

She laughed. “Oh, still out there. It’s a passion with 
him, that nasty river. How I should like him to 
marry.” 

I felt no compunction about satisfying my curiosity 
about the man so long as I did not find out his name, 
and she was quite content to talk about him. 

“He’s really a dear fellow,” she said placidly, “in spite 
of all his nonsense. His mother and I were at school 
together in Cheltenham. Poor Rose!” 

“He told me she was dead,” I murmured. 

“Ah, yes, hut the poor thing was worse than dead long 
before they buried her.” 

On seeing my look of puzzled horror she explained. 
“Oh, I only mean that that man drank not himself into 
his grave (that would have been an excellent thing!) but 
her into hers. A dreadful creature he was.” 

“Jim’s a teetotaller.” 

“Thank God!—though I don’t believe he’d have been 
a sot under any circumstances. He is a strong man”— 
after a pause she added, “in spite of all his nonsense 
about women.” 

I had an uncomfortable, key-hole kind of feeling, but, 
recalling Mabel and his attitude to and about her, I said 
something that led the old lady to explain that always, 
when her godson was not wading through bogs, or being 
shot at with poisoned arrows in South America, he was 
in civilised parts being shot at with poisonous arrows of 
another kind. 

“Those arrows, you’ll understand, Mr. McFadden, 
never miss their mark. . . .” 


128 Julia 

“I’ve seen him draw out at least one and throw it 
away-” 

“Oh? English ?” 

“Yes. Her name-” 

“Oh, no, don’t tell me that,” she retorted, holding up 
a pretty pink hand, “I don’t believe in knowing names.” 

“Neither do I. I was only going to tell yon that she 
was called Mabel.” 

“Oh, that’s all right. The world is full of Mabels.” 

“It is,” I agreed, with secret grimness, “full of 
’em. . . .” 

When I asked, over our coffee on the terrace, what 
she thought would happen if Jim ever really fell in love, 
she sighed, suddenly serious. “Oh, I don’t hnoiv. He 
never has yet—or hadn’t two years ago. I suppose the 
truth is he hasn’t time. Always going back to his Ama¬ 
zon. But if he did (he’s a good deal like poor Rose under 
the skin) I suppose it would go pretty hard with him, 
unless the girl cared for him, too. . . .” 




CHAPTER VII 
[ i ] 


the morning of the 25th of October, Sam and I 
went to the station to meet our guests. I had, to 
spare them the nerve-shock of a Roman taxi-man’s driv¬ 
ing, hired a big limousine, and Sam, whose Italian was a 
thing of beauty and a joy for ever, but who had a way of 
charming the fiercest railway porters, was to see to the 
luggage. 

“Glad they’re coming, Sam ?” I asked as we passed out 
of the tunnel and turned up the Via Hazionale. He 
showed his fine teeth. “Reckon it’s jis about time we-all 
had some fun, Mas’ Gray. I hope the other lady won’t 
be like Lady Ives.” 

“Lady Ives spoke very pleasantly to you that day on 
the stairs.” 

“Yessir—yes, Mas’ Gray; only she looks jis like a big 
rocking-horse, and she stared at me as like’s if I was some 
kin’ of tame monkey.” 

“Oh, well, I’m sure she didn’t; but anyhow, Mrs. 
Amphlett won’t.” 

Mrs. Amphlett did not. So far as I know, Mrs. 
Amphlett did nothing at all, for, amongst other things, 
Mrs. Amphlett did not come. 

When Sandra, stealing up behind me, had, to my sur¬ 
prise, kissed me, she turned, saying: “Here’s my sheep¬ 
dog, Gray,” and behold, the sheep-dog was Julia! 

In the automobile Julia explained. Mrs. Amphlett’s 
129 


Julia 


130 

niece had suddenly come home from India with her two 
children, and, her husband’s people having measles in the 
house, had unexpectedly arrived at her aunt’s hotel and 
cast herself on the old lady’s mercy. “So she didn’t feel 
she ought to leave the poor things, and as I had ’flu, dear 
Humphrey thought you wouldn’t mind if I came.” 

I felt an unusual gush of affection towards Vine-Innes. 

“It is the most delightful surprise of my whole life,” 
I answered. “Let’s send a wire of thanks to the niece.” 

[ ii ] 

Julia had been really ill, with, Sandra told me, a good 
deal of fever, but she seemed cheerful, and her happiness 
in Sandra’s joy over Rome was unmistakable. 

Sandra was joyful, but she insisted on being happy in 
her own way. Ancient history, it seemed, she had a real 
liking for, but, she announced*firmly, she drew the line 
at Christianity. “Ho bones for me, and no early Chris¬ 
tians—silly cuckoos, to live out of this splendid sunlight, 
and be torn to pieces, and burnt! Paris vant bien une 
messe, and Rome must have vale’d bien a saturnalia.” 

“ ‘Valu,’ darling,” corrected Julia, mildly. Sandra 
darted one of her immense blue glances at me, for her 
Prench was infinitely better than her mother’s. 

“At all events,” she insisted, “I will not go and see 
churches, and I don’t care one tinker’s damn where people 
were buried. Ugh!” Her shudder was a real one, I saw, 
though accompanied by a laugh. 

We dined at some of the characteristic restaurants, the 
two tried all the gastronomic specialties to be had at that 
season, the Monteleones and one or two others dined or 


Julia 


131 

lunched with us, and Concetta and Rinaldo did honour 
to their nation. Poor Donna Cesarina announced, on 
meeting Julia, that she was in despair on her arrival. 

“You have—broken my nose, eh?” she added. “I 
wanted to chaperon your daughter, and now I may not!” 

The two women became pretty good friends, and Julia 
was only too glad to divide her labours with Donna 
Cesarina. 

By Christmas invitations were coming in every day. 
Sandra was very popular, and Julia’s beauty and dignity 
were far more valued in Rome than they had ever been 
in London. This she told me herself, adding with simple 
pleasure, “Of course my being a little stodgy doesn’t mat¬ 
ter here, as they think it’s because I can’t speak Italian.” 

I was amused by her much preferring the Italian 
women to those of hers or my nation who had married 
Italians. Some of these are very much Latinised, and 
many of them are delightful in every way, but she was 
always more glad to go to what one might call full-blooded 
houses than to those where Anglo-Saxon customs had modi¬ 
fied the old mceurs. (This word the greatest purist will 
admit to be untranslatable.) 

Once she came in to tea quite excited. “The Marchesa 
di San Luciano knew Dukie when she was only twenty- 
five,” she cried. “That must be fifty years ago. Just 
think, Gray!” 

“I hope,” Sandra observed with austerity, looking up 
from her Lanciani, “that she has not been putting ideas 
into your head, Mummy. Dukie’s youth is unfit matter 
for you. . . .” 

The days passed very happily for Sandra and for me, 
and, so far as we could see, pleasantly for Julia. She 


132 


Julia 


made not the slightest reference to Jim, and had appar¬ 
ently reverted to her old unemotional, rather immovable 
self. 

We heard several good concerts at the Augusteo, and 
one day I found, at one of the auction sales of which 
I am fond, an old, unrestored spinet, as pretty a thing 
as I had seen for a long time, with its mother-of-pearl 
decorations and its graceful legs. I bought this and had 
it put into Julia’s little sitting-room, next my library. 

It was out of tune, but we had it set right, and my 
memories of the rest of that happy time move to the 
sound of faint old sarabandes and musettes tinkling in 
through the open door. 

It was through this spinet that I learned that my un¬ 
derstanding of my friend’s nature was less profound than 
I had believed. 

It was the evening of Epiphany, and Sandra and I had 
been to the Piazza E’avona to see the fun and hear the 
glass trumpets. I left her at Palazzo San Yito on my 
way back, and went home through the wind-swept streets 
in an old open cab that trembled as if it were the one- 
horse shay reincarnated, and on the point of instantane¬ 
ous dissolution. 

I remember as I climbed the stairs thinking of the 
pleasant time Julia and I would have together as we 
waited for Sandra’s return. “I’ll have Sam mull us 
some claret,” I thought, my key in the keyhole. 

The library was on the far side of the house, looking 
on the courtyard garden of Julia’s sitting-room beyond 
it, so she did not hear me open the door, nor my footsteps 
as I hurried down the carpeted passage. 

The door between her sitting-room and the library was 


Julia 


133 


ajar, but she was not, as I had expected to find her, play¬ 
ing, though I knew she had bought a book of old music the 
day before. Thinking that she had gone to her room, I 
sat down in my arm-chair and poked the olive-wood fire 
gently. It had burned low, so presently I put a couple 
of giant pine-cones on, and watched their jolly blaze for 
a moment, full of lazy well-being. 

Benjamin Pranklin, my blackbird, stirred in his cage; 
and Bulbul, my dwarf angora cat, lay so like a snowball 
on the black bearskin rug that I thought to myself that 
she might almost begin to melt before my eyes. 

Then I heard the sound. I could not put a name to it, 
but it was a sound that alarmed me. While I hesitated it * 

was repeated, and I knew it was a groan that must be 
tearing some one’s heart out. Julia, I knew at the same 
instant. 

She was sitting at the spinet, her back to me, her arms 
stretched over the little instrument, her face bent over 
them and hidden. The light fell full on her smooth dark 
hair, the ivory whiteness of her neck and shoulders, and 
shone on the peacock-coloured iridescence of her silk gown 
as it flowed round her on the white Persian rug. 

An open music-book lay on the floor. 

She groaned, but she was not, I saw, as she felt my 
presence and raised her head, in tears. I wished she were. 

I said nothing, nor did she, but for the first time since 
our childhood I put my arms round her and kissed her. 

Her poor face quivered, but she rose with an attempt at 
a smile—such smiles are very dreadful—and pointing to 
the music-book went swiftly into her bedroom. 

It all happened in about three minutes, yet it will re¬ 
main, to the end of my life, one of my clearest recollec- 


Julia 


134 

tions. I stood there for a while, the hook in my hands, 
and then, as I laid it on the spinet, my eyes fell on the 
page at which it was opened. 

“Las, si j’avais pouvoir d’oublier,” I read, 

“Ta beaute, ta beaute, ton bien dire 
Et ton tres donx, tres doux, regarder, 

Finirait mon martyre.” 

Poor Julia. Unconsciously she had chanced on this 
most poignant of all French songs. I knew the words 
by heart, and went sadly enough hack into the library, 
and sat down. What then, I pondered, accounted for her 
amazing serenity? Was it simply that she had a will of 
iron under her gentle, old-fashioned exterior, or did the 
consciousness of doing her duty—the word she thought 
she despised!—give her a kind of false peace that was 
rent only by things like what had happened to-night? 

Or did she actually sometimes forget ? 

No. I could not accept that theory, after seeing the 
torture in her face as she looked up at me. 

“Mais las, mon coeur, n’en puis oublier 

Et cette servage donne courage 
A tout endurer.” 

I seemed to hear the exquisite thirteenth-century air as 
the words rang in my memory. How could “servage” 
give courage to endure ? 

The pine-cones on the hearth had burnt out, and glowing 
ghosts of them, grey at the edges, lay waiting for a breath 
or a touch to shatter them to dust. 


Julia 


135 


“Et puis comment, comment oublier 
Ta beaute, ta beaute, ton bien dire, 

Et ton tres doux, tres doux regarder? 

Mieux aime mon martyre . . .” 

The old king who had written the words may have 
meant them, and Julia might agree with him. As for 
me, I should have chosen, I thought, forgetfulness, hut 
she was of a stouter fabric than I. I knew that I could 
not have borne the pain she was bearing, but perhaps 
that last line did actually hold the answer to my ques¬ 
tion of a moment before, “Mieux aime mon mar- 
tyre. ...” 

My useless musings were interrupted by my grand¬ 
father Sanders’s clock striking the quarter-past eleven, 
and I started, for Sam was to have gone for Sandra at 
eleven, and I knew she would not keep the old fellow 
waiting. She was kind in such matters. 

I rose, with a vague feeling that I must somehow man¬ 
age, without intrusion, to warn Julia. 

But before I had decided what to do she came in and 
sat quietly down opposite me. She had changed her gown, 
and I knew by the dampness of her hair that she had 
been bathing her face, but she had not been bathing tear- 
wet eyes, and her manner was perfectly composed. 

“Poor Grigetto,” she said, “I am so sorry. I did not 
mean you to know.” 

“My dear girl-” 

She shook her head, one finger to her lips. “Please, 
Gray. And you are not to worry. It is no worse than 
we—he and I—knew it was going to be, and—it was the 
extraordinary appropriateness, more than anything else, 
of that song, that upset me.” 



Julia 


136 

The door-hell rang, and before Sandra conld come in 
she had added, taking up her knitting: “It is quite true, 
Gray. There’s no good pretending to you any more, hut 
it is that way: ‘mieux aime mon martyre.’ ” 

[ in ] 

It was only a few days after this that a cousin of 
young Harry Staunton turned up at the Grand Hotel on 
her wedding journey, and, to our amazement, for Julia 
and Sandra had heard nothing of his engagement, her 
husband was Godfrey Lavington. 

We met them quite by chance at the Stauntons’, and 
it was charming to see how proud the erstwhile rejected 
of Sandra was of his pretty bride. We asked them to 
dine with us, and then one evening we went to their hotel 
to a dinner-dance, and it was on this occasion that Sandra 
and Ladislav Lensky met. 

I watched our minx with interest as the dinner went 
on. She was looking very well in a new frock, and she 
knew it. Julia glanced at her with obvious anxiety once 
or twice, but I found it quite natural, considering the 
bride’s presence, that she should spread her net for the 
agreeable and good-looking sculptor. It must be admitted, 
too, that he did not play the gaby and march blindly into 
that snare. 

Ho, he came of a subtle, richly-tentacled race, and his 
response to her cunning overtures was a joy to behold. 

A handsome man, too, a little on the Jewish side, 
though he was no Jew, and with singularly beautiful, 
flexible hands, every movement of which meant some¬ 
thing. 


Julia 


137 

I judged him to be in the early thirties, and after 
dinner he sat on a little gilt chair and played the lute, 
an instrument I had never heard before, delightfully. 

Amy Lavington and Godfrey watched him and Sandra, 
later, as they joined the dancers in the great dining¬ 
room, with the air of benevolent amusement one often 
sees in the newly-married towards those of their friends 
who are still in the outer darkness of celibacy, and Julia 
and I watched them with much the same sentiment. 

“She is a wretch,” I said once, as she swam past us 
in his arms, the blue blaze of her eyes burning on his 
face. 

“So is he, then, Gray.” 

“He’s really attractive.” 

“So is she.” She gave a sudden sigh. “Oh, Gray— 
I do hope she isn’t going to have one of her wild fits 
about this man.” 

“Does she have ’em often?” 

It was then that I heard, from her, more about the 
girl’s curious obstinacy of which the Princess had told me. 
“She really loses her head, you know, and nearly always 
it’s about some man she couldn’t possibly marry.” 

“That’s a pity,” I answered, not very sympathetically. 
I had liked Sandra more since she had been in Rome, but 
if she was going to cause Julia any trouble of this un¬ 
necessary and unpleasant kind, she would get scant mercy 
from me. 

“This man has money, Julia, judging by what he says; 
you can’t breed race-horses, or go round the world on 
nothing.” Then I laughed. “Aren’t we idiots! Just 
because they are dancing together and she is showing 
Godfrey how satisfied she is not to be in Madame Amy’s 


138 Julia 

place. That’s all it is, Julia. I say,” I broke off, on 
purpose, “isn’t that Donna Crescenza Staunton?” 

It was, and the little Italian-Englishwoman came and 
joined us, and, while our bride and groom danced to¬ 
gether, told us all about Lensky. 

“Oh, he is charming,” she declared, “a rrr-ipper—a—a 
corrrker. He has cousins in England—Jean de Lensky, 
at the Polish Legation, perhaps you know him? Ho? 
Ah, well, this one, Ladislav, we call him here, or Lao 
tout court , he is one of my favourite dancing partners. 
But,” she added, suddenly grave, “Harry doesn’t like 
him.” 

“Indeed ?” I asked. 

“Ho. Harry says he would not let his sister marry 
poor Lao, and that is drrreadful, non e vero, Mr. Mc- 
Eadden—only,” and she giggled delightfully, “Harry has 
not a sister, so it matters less much!” 

On our way home I asked Sandra what she thought of 
her favourite partner, and she answered crossly: “Hoth- 
ing. I couldn’t dance in the car if he were here, could 
I, and that’s all I know of him—dancing.” 

But it was only a very short time before she knew a 
good deal more about the man than just his fox-trotting 
steps, and, indeed, so did we all. 

He was always the perfection of correctness, he accepted 
no more hospitality than he gave in return, and he was 
one of the best hosts I have ever seen, but the long and 
short of it was that Julia and I, before a month had 
passed, were bored to death by his constant presence. 

He came to tea—always with some good excuse, a 
book I had spoken of and that, with suspicious frequency, 
he always happened just to have bought and finished read- 


Julia 


139 


ing, or some music Julia had mentioned, or flowers for her 
or Sandra, or tickets for a concert;—things of this kind 
brought us together pretty well every day. 

And there were dances and tea-dances at the big hotels, 
arrangements to meet at picture-galleries, or to look at 
sculpture together. His ingenuity, and the glossy imper¬ 
turbability with which he baffled my I fear occasionally 
visible impatience, demanded and received a certain ad¬ 
miration from me, but for all that he was a nuisance. 

Julia was, of course very polite, but she met his sleek 
encroachments as a fine rock meets that of the sea, with¬ 
out the slightest signs of giving way. I had, indeed, 
never seen her so cold in manner to any one, and this I 
once told her. 

“I know, Gray,” she answered, looking up from the 
myrtle-blue wool (she called it periwinkle) of which she 
was knitting a frock for Sandra. 

“Can’t you help looking at him in that remote way?” 

“Oh, yes, of course I could help it,” she admitted with 
gravity. “I do it on purpose—poor man.” 

So her attitude was not a weakness but an achieve¬ 
ment ! 

“Why ‘poor man,’ though, dear?” 

“Because he is really in love with her, and she is only 
having one of her ‘affairs’ with him. Oh, Gray,” she 
went on, dropping her knitting, “I am so worried about 
her. She is quite capable of marrying him, and then she 
would get over ‘caring’ in this—this way of hers, and it 
would be dreadful.” 

“Good Lord, Julia!” I exclaimed with a gust of angry 
impatience, “you make a great matter of a very little 
one. If it’s ‘only one of her affairs’ she won’t marry him. 


140 Julia 

If she does marry him it can only mean that she cares 
for him. Sandra is twenty-three years old, practically, 
and she’s no fool.” 

She stared at me for a moment with, in her beautiful 
eyes, the blank look that made her like a statue; an al¬ 
most quite unspeculative expression. 

Then she said slowly: “You see her—naturally—just 
as a spoilt, post-war young girl with a silly mother. I 
see her—I can’t help it, Gray, for I know —as Mamma’s 
grandchild, and Papa’s, and Dukie’s—what is it called? 
—collateral descendant. Then there was my great-grand¬ 
mother’s sister. You never heard about her.” 

“I’ve heard about you, Julia, and Vine-Innes’s mother, 
and your grandmother Ives. If she has bad blood she has 
good blood as well. And then Vine-Innes himself. He 
isn’t wild,” I added, with the absurd taint of disdain 
every man, more or less, feels about a man he believes to 
be incapable of wildness. 

“Ah, no, Humphrey is good. Very good, of course,” 
she replied. “But have you ever for a moment thought 
that Sandra was a bit like him? Oh, no, Gray, she is 
what they call a throw-back. And—I know a woman who 
understands all that dreadful Preud stuff, and she ex¬ 
plains it all to me. She says Sandra suffers from in¬ 
hibitions.” 

“Sandra suffers from rubbish,” I interrupted her 
crossly. “You have spoilt her, and she is simply a mulish, 
modern girl who would take her own way over your dead 
body, Julia.” 

“Yes,” was her answer, deeply sad, “she would; but 
that can’t stop my loving her more than—you have no 
idea how I love her. If I could help her get her mind 


Julia 


141 

straight, and be happy in a normal way, without this 
craving for excitement, I would”—she paused and then 
finished in a quiet, firm voice, “I should not in the least 
mind dying. That sounds theatrical, but it is true.” 

I had no doubt of it, hut still I doubted the correct¬ 
ness of her interpretation of the girl’s nature. She was, 
as I had said, abnormally egotistical, and such egotism as 
hers inevitably marches with ruthlessness; but I had 
known other women as ruthless as she, and they had not 
come to grief. 

To me it seemed that with a husband who both loved 
and bullied her she would be all right, and I believed 
that under the young Pole’s silken manner there lay a 
will of iron and some potential brutality. 

For several days after this talk I watched Sandra and 
him very closely, and finally came to the conclusion that 
while they were both in a turmoil of physical attraction, 
she was without definite ideas about the future, whereas 
he meant marriage. 

“If he asks her to marry him,” I told myself, “and she 
accepts him, it will be because she can’t help it any more 
than he can. When they have been married a few months 
the battle will come, and he will win it, and if the physical 
attraction holds good, she will turn into a happy, submis¬ 
sive wife and plague him with fits of jealousy.” 

That was my view, but Julia did not share it. 

“No good, Gray,” she objected, with unusual energy, 
“it isn’t love. I’m too ignorant and—and—old-fashioned 
to discuss these things, but it’s just youth, and Kome, and 
his looks—and—and her temperament. I have seen her 
exactly the same about two other men, remember.” 

After a pause she added, thus referring, though indi- 


142 


Julia 


rectly, for the first time since it occurred, to the episode 
of the French king’s song, “It isn’t love. Love is quite 
different. You see, Gray, I know” 

I had it in my mind to quote the saying about the use¬ 
lessness of trying to find grapes on thorn-trees, but I 
did not do it. Her love for the man she had seen only 
for a few minutes was indeed a thing of which her daugh¬ 
ter would never be capable, but it by no means followed 
that her daughter’s very obvious feeling for the handsome 
Pole might not be the finest flower of that thorn-tree. 

“Going to marry him, Sandra?” I asked once as we 
wandered up and down the loggia, watching a web of 
rain that veiled the trees in the garden. I was leaning 
on her shoulder in a way she liked, though it was of no 
practical use to me, and I felt it give a little jerk. 

“Don’t,” she exclaimed, her deep voice huskier than 
usual. And I gave it up. 

That Lensky was eligible, I knew. He had lived out 
of Poland since his boyhood, and his fortune, said to be 
in English investments, was an undoubted fact. 

He had, I gathered, lived pretty hard, but it had hurt 
him neither physically nor, I judged, in any other way. 
He had the entree to the best Koman society, where every 
one seemed to like him, and in view of these things I for 
my part looked forward with satisfaction to the day when 
he would take Sandra off Julia’s tender, inadequate hands. 

Even Julia, as April sped by, began to lose some of 
her misgivings, for the young man’s good influence on the 
girl was undeniable. With a few whip-lash phrases, for 
example, he had brought her to her senses about her 
hideous slouch, and she now walked erect and well poised, 
to her great improvement; and he had made her give up 


Julia 143 

the livid greens she was so fond of, and laughed her out 
of her liking for decadent sculpture and poetry. 

“Vine-Innes wouldn’t mind, would he?” I asked Julia 
one day as we sat, drenched in late April sunshine, on the 
terrace at Frascati. 

“Oh, no, of course not. I think they would all ap¬ 
prove of Mr. de Lensky. He is—very nice, Gray.” 

And I did not force her to say again that her doubts 
were of her daughter. 

The end of it all came very suddenly. Poodle and Scar- 
letta reviled the man with a conviction that must have 
been consoling to them, and the Stauntons, who felt a little 
responsible, were very bitter; but I was sorry, as much as 
anything else, for him. 

He was unhappy enough, God knows, and admitted to 
me that he had behaved abominably, only putting forward 
the exasperating but conclusive excuse that he couldn’t 
help it. “I assure you,” he said to me in the shaded draw¬ 
ing-room, his white face damp and drawn, “that I am 
bitterly miserable about it. It—it swept me away. I 
am, of course,” he added, pressing his handkerchief to his 
forehead, “quite ready to—to marry Miss Vine-Innes if— 
if you all think it—best.” 

“Bosh,” I answered, wild with helplessness, “what good 
would that do! Ho, no, you had better just—go away. 
Go to America with your dancer—go to hell for all I 
care.” 

“I—I shall certainly go to hell with my dancer,” he 
returned, suddenly controlling me by his manner. “I 
know quite well what she is. But I can’t live without 
her, Mr. McFadden. . . .” 

The world seemed to me to be filled with maddening 


144 


Julia 


people who couldn’t live without other people, for that 
had, during the last few horrible days, been Sandra’s 
parrot-cry. 

“I know a man who loves a woman and has been— 
decent enough to leave her,” I said. “And she loves him 
in a way you can have no conception of, and she does not 
go capering off across the world after him. . . 

He bowed. “All my respect to them. But . . .” He 
shrugged his shoulders hopelessly, and I rose. 

“I will tell Mrs. Vine-Innes what you have said, and 
that I, in her name, have refused your offer.” 

Drawing a deep breath, he put his handkerchief into 
his sleeve and bowed again. 

“Hothing I could say would be of the slightest use,” 
he murmured, “but—don’t let her think that I am going 
away to be happy. I would give my right hand—and I 
am a sculptor—to go back to where I was three weeks ago, 
before—before . . .” 

“Before Bayonne arrived. You had better,” I re¬ 
turned, suddenly sorry for the poor wretch, “be thankful 
to your gods, if you have any, that she came before your 
marriage and not afterwards. Mrs. Yine-Innes and I are 
both most grateful for that.” 

“Yes. Yes, that is at least something. As to my gods, 
Mr. McFadden, I am a Catholic. Good morning.” 

He left me in the middle of the dim room, and after 
a moment I went to where Sandra lay in bed, a white 
cloth on her head, her cheeks hollow and bright with 
fever. Julia sat by her, and an English nurse, in the 
background, was reading, undisturbed by her patient’s 
dull, rhythmic moans. 


Julia 145 

“Humphrey and Papa will be here to-night/’ Julia said 
to me in an undertone, holding out a telegram. 

“Good.” 

“Mummy—Gray—go and get him. Tell him it’s kill¬ 
ing me. I can’t live without him. . . .” 

“And he,” I thought, “can’t live without that degenerate, 
middle-aged French dancer.” The world seemed to me a 
very had place indeed. 


CHAPTER VIII 
[ i ] 


“T"AO you mean to say, Gray,” the perturbed Poodle 
asked me the next night, as we dawdled over our 
coffee, “that one look at the creature was enough for him V* 

“One hour’s looking, yes.” 

“Pooh, pooh, my dear fellow, don’t tell me that . Why, 
such things simply don’t happen!” 

“Oh, don’t they ?” I thought, with some bitterness. But 
I only persisted mildly that this extraordinary coup de 
foudre had actually taken place. 

“Can she dance V* 

“Yes. She dances very well, but she is thirty-five if 
she’s a day, and, so far as I could see, she is quite un¬ 
attractive,” I answered. 

“And he just came and broke off the engagement, like 
that ?” Poodle was desperately sorry for his granddaugh¬ 
ter, but he could, I perceived, not help being what some 
modern writers so unpleasingly call “intrigued” about the 
dancer. 

Dancers had at one time been rather a speciality of his. 

“What’s her name, Gray ?” 

“Her name is Poujat,” I answered, “Henriette Poujat, 
but she calls herself Bayonne.” 

“What’s that mean, exactly?” 

‘‘Well, rayon means a ray—ray of light, you know.” 

“Oh, of course. Yes. Quite so. . . .” 

He had reviled Lensky with immense bitterness that 
146 


Julia 147 

morning, after seeing Sandra and hearing her appalling 
groans; his indignation had been fiery and sincere, but, 
true to his roots, he was now interested, in a not unfriendly 
way, in the woman who had wrought the mischief. 

“Not a first-rater, is she, like Pavlova ?” 

“Good Lord, no! Doing a turn at a music-hall.” 

“After the fellow’s money, I suppose.” 

I hesitated, hut he might, I thought, as well he told 
what to Julia and me was so much the worst of the whole 
business, and what he was hound to learn, anyhow, sooner 
or later. 

“Look here, Poodle,” I began slowly, “I’d better tell 
you exactly how it happened.” 

“Yes, do, there’s a good fellow, and don’t be too long, 
for I’d rather like to stretch my legs a bit before I turn 
in,” he returned. 

“All right. Well, in the first place he and Sandra were 
not, as you assume, engaged. They were, of course, on 
the point of it, but he had not definitely asked her, which 
I think ought to be taken into consideration a little. He 
was, or sincerely believed himself to be, in love with 
her-” 

“Then why’d he dawdle, hang him?” 

“He told me that he was so happy that he just drifted 
along from day to day—I quite understood that.” 

Poodle looked brightly up at me, beaming. “Oh, my 
dear Grigetto, so do I. I always liked that period of 
delicious—h’m, Jim! Go on,” he added, flushing sud¬ 
denly. 

I went on. “And mind you,” I said, “he wasn’t per¬ 
fectly sure that she cared for him. Sandra’s a child to 
you and me, but she’s a clever little thing, and she played 



148 Julia 

her hand very skilfully, Ives. I’ve seen her treat him 
like a dog.” 

“That’s right, that’s the way!” 

I don’t think he knew that he had spoken aloud. 

“And then they went to see some famous juggler, and 
Rayonne was on the programme. He had never even heard 
of her before.” 

“Oh, I see. Were you there, Gray ?” 

“Ho. I loathe varieties. But the Stauntons were, and 
Harry Staunton told me that neither he nor Crescenza 
noticed anything in Lensky’s manner. They had supper 
at his studio afterwards, and he seemed much as usual.” 

“Well? Did he go and see her the next day? I’ll 
wager he did” 

“Then you’d lose your wager, my friend. Instead of 
that he took Julia and Sandra to Anzio in his car, and 
they had lunch and dinner there, and came back by moon¬ 
light. Oh,” I added, “he did all he could. Sandra and 
moonlight, you know. . . . 

“The truth was that he had just finished a bust of a 
friend of the woman’s—some French singer, I think he 
said—and the day after the trip to Anzio she came to 
his studio to see it. Quite innocent on her part, too, you 
see.” 

He rose. “Yes, I see. Deuced hard on the Brat, though, 
and our poor Julia. Well, I think I’ll go and stretch my 
legs for a bit, Gray,” he repeated, kicking out first one 
and then the other of his neat little feet, his eyes fixed 
on them. 

“Oh, no you’ll not, Poodle. It won’t stretch your legs 
to sit at a table at a variety-show and stare at Rayonne. 
Besides, I’ve got something more to tell you.” 


Julia 149 

Like a found-out child he sat down, blushing, and waited 
for me to go on. 

“The worst of the whole thing is this, Ives. Sandra, 
when he hadn’t been to see her for two days, rang him up, 
and he came, and his manner gave the whole show away. 
She was as quick as a needle about it, but said very little, 
and let him go without a fuss. Then she waited until 
some one, suspecting nothing, told her that her ‘rejecting 
poor Lao’ had pitched him head-first into the arms of 
Rayonne.” 

“My word, that was a bit thick-” 

“It was, but not so thick as what happened next. 
Sandra went to his studio all alone the following morn¬ 
ing, and made a wild scene, and he—and it was to my 
mind very decent of him—made a clean breast of every¬ 
thing, and gave her some sal volatile, and lent her one of 
his handkerchiefs—it’s the one she has in iced water, on 
her head—and sent her home in a taxi.” 

I drew a deep breath, suddenly overtaken by an almost 
irresistible aversion from the whole business. 

“And what happened next ?” 

“Next ? Oh, she went straight from the studio to the 
woman’s hotel.” 

“Good God!” The words sounded like two reports of a 
pop-gun. 

“Yes. She—she begged Rayonne to give him up.” 

Ives’s rosy face lost its bloom as he listened, and his 
eyes were hot with angry shame. 

“Oh, the fool,” he stammered, “the little fool. I say, 
Gray, does Julia know that ?” 

“Yes. As a matter of fact Rayonne behaved very well. 
Sandra—poor kid—had some kind of an hysterical attack 



150 


Julia 


and nearly fainted, and when she was calm again she— 
Rayonne—brought her home.” 

“Christ, what a story!” He rose and walked nervously 
round the room, biting his lips, and tugging at his little 
cropped moustache. “I suppose,” he added suddenly, 
stopping and plunging his hands into his trousers pockets, 
“it’s all over the town by now ? Common talk, eh ?” 

But on that point I could reassure him. 

“Ho,” I said; “after she had handed Sandra over to 
Julia, and I must say she behaved very well. She’s a 
common woman, and no doubt worse, but she seemed sin¬ 
cerely sorry for the child, and though I did not ask her 
to keep her mouth shut she promised me, in brief, that 
she would.” 

“H’m. What was her attitude towards what’s his name, 
Lensky ?” 

“Strictly business-like.” 

He nodded. “Yes. Part of her job, of course, that 
sort of thing, and he’s a very rich man, poor devil. ...” 

He went out for a time, but he did not go to the variety 
theatre. 


[ n ] 

I had little or no talk about the matter with Vine-Innes, 
whom Julia, of course, told everything. He looked quite 
unmoved by the unpleasant events that had brought about 
his visit to Rome, but I noticed that he sat for hours by 
the girl’s bed, stroking her hand and talking to her with 
a gentleness that, in him, surprised me. 

Hone of the three, I also noticed, seemed to consider 
her illness other than a natural one; it might have been 


Julia 


151 


an honest typhoid, canght from an honest bacillus, instead 
of what I suspected it to be—a kind of subconscious lure 
to get back the lost lover. 

I had not forgotten the Princess’s account of Sandra’s 
prowess in fever-running, and I was therefore utterly 
taken aback when Dr. Amici, whom I had insisted on 
calling in, despite Julia’s wish for an English doctor, 
took me aside one morning and told me that the child 
was really very ill indeed. 

“But—it’s only imaginary,” I blurted out. 

He shrugged his shoulders. “Ah, my dear Signor 
McFadden,” he answered, “do not be so unpractical!” 

“Unpractical ?” 

“Si, si. The young lady is suffering mentally, I grant; 
but that is of all suffering the worst, and the hardest to 
cure. Can you get this gentleman to come back to her ?” 

“Ho. Impossible.” 

“Then I must tell you that I should like a consultation. 
She is gravely ill. . . .” 

Thus it was that a very old man, a Professor from a 
town in Northern Italy, was called in at vast expense, and 
that I for some days mentally hung my head. 

Sandra now lay in a kind of stupor; very small and 
pitiable she looked, and very distressing were the rhythmic 
groans she made, hour in and hour out. She ate nothing, 
she spoke to nobody, but when Julia kissed her or her 
father tried to cheer her up, big tears would roll down 
over her still cheeks in a way I could not bear to see, 
much as I had misjudged her at first. 

After all, she was only a child. 

Once Lensky came to see me, and repeated his offer 
of marrying her, but I again refused it on my own 


152 Julia 

responsibility, for the old Professor bad been able slightly 
to improve her condition, and our plans were made for 
her family’s taking her into the Abruzzi, where Crescenza 
Staunton had lent us a villa. 

“It’s good of you, Lensky,” I said, I fear stiffly, “but 
that wouldn’t help.” 

“Ho,” he murmured, “I suppose not. I just thought I 
had better let you know I—was still willing.” 

He looked wretchedly ill, and, when I asked his plans, 
only shook his head. “I have no plans. Oh, yes—I have 
bought— her —but I’ve no delusions as to the value of my 
new— bibelot. . . .” 

I was extremely sorry for him. . . . 

It was very warm in mid-May, and I was glad when at 
last the tragic party had left Rome, for Julia looked hag¬ 
gard and ill, her hair had gone very white on her temples, 
and the two men were worn out with the heat. 

When they had gone I partly collapsed, spending a 
week on my adjustable day-bed in my darkened room, old 
Sam fussing over me like a mother. 

“Berry bad business, Mas’ Gray,” had been his only 
comment on the whole matter. 

I love heat, and gradually I grew better. It helped 
me, too, to learn, through the various people who kindly 
came to say good-bye to me before their summer flitting 
to the mountains or the northern lakes, that Rayonne had 
kept her promise, and said nothing of poor Sandra’s out¬ 
rageous visit. Ho one seemed to suspect the truth. 

“What has become of Lensky?” I asked Piero Monte- 
leone, as he sat by me, his mouth full of cherries. 

“Aha! He has gone away, and one says, not alone. 
Your young lady must have hit him pretty hard, McFad- 


Julia 


153 

den, for lie simply lost his head. I saw him once or twice, 
and he looked ghastly. English girls are,” he added, 
“awful flirts! No Italian girl could have encouraged a 
man as she did Lensky, and then refuse him. . . .” 

“Oh, he can’t have cared much,” I returned, laughing, 
“or he couldn’t have consoled himself so easily.” 

To which fly he rose, explaining volubly that men other 
than ice-blooded Anglo-Saxons did not muddle up consola¬ 
tion and despair, any more than they muddled love and 
desire. 

“You never distinguish,” he wailed, blowing a mouth¬ 
ful of cherry-stones into space over the stone railing, “you 
never distinguish! . . .” 

One day to my surprise old Mrs. Angell came to see 
me, a big bunch of copper-coloured roses in her hand. 

“I have heard,” she began, still puffing from the long 
ascent as she sat down, “of your trouble. I am so sorry, 
Mr. McFadden.” 

My heart seemed to turn over, but I asked her, with 
as great calmness as I could, what she meant. 

“That poor child, of course. How very dreadful it is.” 

Wisely I held my tongue, and she went on. 

“A most shocking thing,” she declared indignantly, 
“disgraceful.” 

“It’s kind of you,” I said, inwardly raging at the evi¬ 
dent uselessness of all our precautions, “to be so sym¬ 
pathetic. . . .” 

“My dear man, I’m an old woman with grandchildren 
of the girl’s own age. Naturally I am sorry for her. How¬ 
ever,” she added, as Sam came in with a bowl for the 
roses, “she’ll get over it. They always do, you know, and 
I sometimes think that the more violent it is at first 


154 Julia 

the surer they are to recover. Clears the system, you 
know. . . 

As I thrust the stems of the roses through the brass 
net in the bowl, I nodded stupidly, wondering how on 
earth I could ever manage to tell poor Julia that the 
secret was out. 

I knew my Rome, and could hear in imagination the 
cruelly eager, if not eagerly cruel, clatter of its manifold 
tongues, busy with Sandra’s—-yes, and Julia’s—name. 

It was a shock to me, and when I had settled the last 
rose and put the bowl on a table, I leaned back in my 
chair with a feeling close to faintness. 

In the dusk of the green shutters I dared to close my 
eyes for a moment. 

Then I heard the murmur of the old lady’s voice again 
crystallise into words. “Yes,” she was saying, “I call it 
a perfect disgrace that the Government doesn’t take some 
steps to stamp it out. Is it true that she caught it coming 
home from a picnic at Albano ?” 

Malaria, she meant! I could have gibbered with relief. 
Before she left I asked casually if she had any news from 
Jim. 

“Oh yes,” she cried, beaming. “That’s one of the things 
I meant to tell you. He’s been ill, too, and is now in a 
place called Maine, with friends.” 

“Dear me, I hope he’s not very ill ?” 

“Oh no. A touch of fever, he says—he will go to such 
unhealthy places, you know. ...” 

“I suppose,” I returned with a mental moan, for I had 
had my fill of vicarious emotion, and longed for peace, 
and my faith in this stranger was necessarily less profound 


Julia 155 

than my faith in Julia—“I suppose he will be going to 
England while he’s so near V’ 

“So near! From America to England! You Ameri¬ 
cans are quaint. No, he is spending the summer there— 
it’s called Seal Harbour, such an amusing name!—and 
goes straight back to his nasty Amazon. He says—let me 
see. . . 

Opening her purple velvet bag she took out the letter, 
and as she looked for the place she wanted I could see 
that the handwriting was small and clear, and full of 
character. 

“Yes, here it is, too tiresome of him, I think. ‘No, 
dear Godmother Rosalie, I am not coming home soon. In¬ 
deed, I daresay it may be years before I come. South 
America suits me very well, and I love my work, and 
beyond you there is no one I could see on your side of 
the world with any particular joy.’ There,” she con¬ 
cluded, putting the letter away, “isn’t it unkind of him ?” 

[ ni ] 

A few days later I received a long letter from the Prin¬ 
cess Scarletta, in which she told me that she and her 
Muzio had, on receipt of Julia’s letter, hastened to Aquila 
to take their share in the nursing, and that Sandra was 
better, and beginning to sit up in her room. 

“She is appallingly thin, and looks more like a monkey 
than anything else as she lies there with her eyes shut, but 
she has no more fever, and is eating with a little more 
appetite. 

“Julia is not well, poor love, worn out with anxiety, of 


156 


Julia 


course, and I am trying to persuade her to let my maid 
just touch up her hair, which has gone white in the oddest 
way, like two horns, on her temples. 

“But she is very pig-headed, my dear Grigetto, as you 
of course have long since noticed with your sharp eyes, 
and I doubt if she’ll have the sense to do it. 

“The villa is very uncomfortable—all tiled floors, and 
the most frightful resonance all through it, and not an 
inch of comfort. It is extraordinary how little sense of 
comfort Italians have. Donna Crescenza will, however, 
set it to rights, I’ve no doubt, now that she is so rich. 

“Ebbene, caro Grigetto, I wonder what you will think 
of Muzio’s plan! He’s just bought a new touring-car, and 
we are going to Switzerland in it, and he wants Julia to 
let Sandra go with us. 

“It will do her good, I’m sure, for after malaria every 
one feels depressed and exhausted, and she is young enough 
to be cheered up by change and new faces. What do you 
say? Do write to J. and advise her to do it. Hope you 
are well and getting on with your next book. Dear Fan 
was asking me about it in her last letter. The Duke’s 
cousin, that awful Parker person (or parson!) dropped 
dead in his pulpit, so his son, who is not at all bad—a 
good regiment does so much for a young man!—is to have 
the next innings. 

“Salop wrote it to me, and he thinks it would be an 
excellent plan if Reggie Parker-Cravenarms (he’s to take 
the family name at once) and Sandra were to take a fancy 
to each other. So do I! Between you and me, my dear, 
I should like to see the child married to any suitable man, 
though I daren’t tell Julia so. J. prefers to go through 


Julia 


157 

life with her eyes shut, and would never face the fact 
that her daughter is as human as other women—and pos¬ 
sibly even more so! A bon entendeur, mon cher, demi-mot 
suffit! Non e vero ? 

“But of course primness, like other vices, sometimes, 
skips a generation, and Julia is prim, there’s no denying 
that. 

“Well, good-bye. So sorry not to have seen you in 
Borne, but we do so loathe Naples, and the direct run to 
Palermo was better in every way. 

“Yours affectionately, 

“Amber Scarletta. 

“P.S.—Mind you write soon to Julia.” 

I did write to Julia, congratulating her on her skill in 
not letting the Princess suspect the truth, and advising 
her very strongly to agree to the Swiss plan. 

“The very fact that her grandmother and the Prince 
do not know,” I added, “is bound to help her to get over 
it. They will have no sympathy with her moodiness, and 
she will be ashamed to put her own folly into cold words. 
Poor kid,” I added, “you know how sorry I am for her, 
Julia, but I am convinced that the root of her illness is 
less the loss of Lensky than shame over what she herself 
did. She is very proud, and she is now suffering over 
the memory of her folly in going to see the man, and 
Bayonne. . . 

Bather to my surprise, Julia agreed with me, and just 
after I reached Toblach, where I had promised to meet 
Maddox and the Emerys, I had a wire from Vine-Innes 
saying that Julia and he were starting for England that 


Julia 


158 

night, as he had been recalled on business by the Duke, 
many of whose affairs I knew to be in his hands. They 
had meant to return via Germany, and to stop for a week 
at Toblach, so I was disappointed, but I was glad to know 
from Scarlett a, shortly afterwards, that Sandra was better 
and, as he expressed it, “putting on meat.” 

The Emerys were delightful people, and we had a very 
enjoyable summer pottering about in the Tirol, which I 
much prefer to Switzerland. Kitty Emery, the daughter, 
became a great pal of mine, and after poor little neurotic 
Sandra she was as refreshing as a cold dip after a trying, 
mountainous walk. 

Eor years my foot had not given me so little trouble as 
it did those three months, and I finished my novel, which 
had hung fire so long, and sent it off to my agent, with 
more satisfaction than I often feel in my own stuff. 

During this period I had heard only once from Julia, 
and, except for the Prince’s note, not at all from any of 
the other members of the tribe, until September, when 
Maddox and I were loitering along Lake Lucerne by our¬ 
selves. 

The Emerys had absorbed me, and their affairs were 
just complicated enough to interest without exhausting 
my mind. 

Their Kitty had become engaged to a charming Cali¬ 
fornian boy, and in all their plans the kind people made 
a place for me. I was to go to the wedding in Boston, at 
Easter, and then, after a summer at Ste Angele, to “hop” 
over to San Francisco to visit the bride and groom in all 
their glory. 

Then, that rainy day, when the lake from our windows 
looked, as Lake Lucerne, so much more than Lake Geneva, 


Julia 


159 

can look, beyond words forsaken and melancholy, an infant 
in an absurd green uniform brought me a pile of letters, 
and among them was Scarletta’s. 

His English was delightful in itself, but I will not 
reproduce its various quaintnesses. 

“Dear McFadden, 

“Have just come across your name as being in Lucerne. 
Could you manage to come over here for a few days ?” 
(He wrote on the paper of a Montreux hotel.) “Ambra 
and I are rather in a fix, and should like your advice be¬ 
fore disturbing poor Julia. . . 

“The devil take her,” I exclaimed, “it’s that Brat 
again!” 

And of course it was. 

“Sandra has met a young man here named Barton Mid¬ 
wood, and has gone off the deep end about him. To tell 
you the truth, I don’t think he is particularly keen on her, 
though the monkey is looking prettier than I ever saw 
her, or my wife either, but they are together all the time— 
at this minute I can see them alone in a rowing-boat on 
the lake—and people are beginning to talk, and we don’t 
quite know what to do. 

“Julia has not been well for the past month, as you 
probably know; Humphrey wrote Ambra that the doctor 
says it’s her nerves, which certainly comes as a surprise 
to us, and that she must have no worries of any kind. So 
now you see why I’m bothering you. 

“Between you and me, my dear friend, we both wish S. 
would marry some one, but we are by no means sure that 


160 


Julia 


this Captain Midwood is the right some one. And Ambra 
is convinced that you will not mind giving us your advice. 

“Will you come and pay us a visit at this really very 
comfortable hotel? We can give you a good room with 
a bath, and a room near you for Sam . . and he was, 
with distinguished salutations, mine. 

I was bored and vexed at the prospect of becoming again 
mixed up with Sandra’s affairs, but I could, for Julia’s 
sake, not refuse to share the burden. 

I at once sent for and explained to Maddox that I 
should have to leave him to wait by himself till the 
Emerys came back from Silvaplana. 

He took it with kindly resignation, and Sam began pack¬ 
ing my things that evening before dinner. 

“I hope that Polish gent’man hasn’t bobbed up again, 
Mas’ Gray,” the old fellow asked me as he bent over my 
steamer trunk. “He’s give we-all quite ’nuff trouble!” 

“Oh no, Sam,” I answered cheerfully, “I guess he’s a 
back-number, all right.” 

As indeed he was. In the newly-arrived Paris Hew 
York Herald I read an hour later, while waiting for 
Maddox to go into dinner with me, of the poor fellow’s 
suicide. 

It seems that he had recently come back from Stock¬ 
holm, and had been observed by his friends to be ill and 
melancholy, and the day before the article was published 
he had shot himself in his bath-room in one of the big 
Champs-Elysees hotels. 

Two Swedish acquaintances of ours sat at the next 
table, and as one of them was reading a Swedish news¬ 
paper I asked him, as we sat down, to let me look at it 
for a moment. 


Julia 161 

“Can you read it ?” he said, amused, as I searched its 
pages. 

“No. . . ” 

But I could read proper names, and presently, among 
the theatre advertisements, I found what I sought. Yes, 
there it was, between an English name and a Japanese, 
“Bayonne.” 

Poor fellow! I meant to try to find out something 
more about it all, but I could not. No one in the hotel 
knew any details, and presently I forgot it. 

I had little sleep that night, for I was full of fore¬ 
bodings about Sandra and, through her, about Julia. 

Julia, ill, broken down by the strain of which only I 
had so much as a suspicion, to be harrowed and frightened 
by this new folly of her daughter! I had, once out of 
sight and earshot of the girl, lost a good deal of my sym¬ 
pathy for her; to be exact it had never been sympathy; it 
had been no better than pity, and I decided that if this 
Captain Midwood was even fairly suitable I should advise 
the Prince and Princess to send him over to interview 
Vine-Innes. 

In this case, it seemed to me, half a loaf was a very 
great deal better than no bread, and it was, moreover, a 
loaf possessing the mysterious quality of being able more 
or less to nourish Julia as well as Sandra. 

“Once the Brat’s off her hands,” I mused as the heavy 
hours plodded by, “she will be able to do something to help 
herself in her own trouble. Vine-Innes might take her 
round the world, as he wanted to do just after the war.” 
And I felt a pang of gratitude towards Vine-Innes for 
being, in spite of his vanity and his knock-knees, so really, 
in his cold way, devoted to his wife. 


162 


Julia 


“She may not know it,” I thought, “but his affection and 
faithfulness mean a great deal to Julia. . . 

As I got into the hotel bus the next morning, my foot 
slipped on a flake of mud, and coming down heavily in 
the road, I sprained my good ankle and fainted dead 
away. An end to my rushing to the rescue of Julia’s 
peace of mind, and an end to the pleasant rooms at Mon- 
treux; an end and a beginning to many things. 

They carried me upstairs, and an hour later my foot 
was in plaster of Paris, and I had settled down to com¬ 
plete inaction for two or three weeks. 

Maddox sent a wire to Scarletta, and a few days later 
I had a long letter written in Italian (a sign of agitation, 
in this innocent Anglophobe) and another from Sandra. 

Sam brought them up to me, his mournful old eyes full 
of pleasure. “Guess they’s all pretty sorry we-all couldn’t 
come, Mas’ Gray,” he said. 


CHAPTER IX 
[ i 3 


/"XXE bright fall afternoon, as I sat on my balcony 
reading a letter from Dave Franklin, an old man 
came out on to bis balcony on my left, and sat down with 
an audible sigh of weariness. 

His back was to me—a large back like that of some giant 
beetle, round and polished—and I could see that his big 
head was bold and rosy, and his hair white. He looked 
vaguely familiar, but I went on with my letter, and when 
I had finished it, took up a book—a novel by an English 
woman named Kaye-Smith, who I am told is very young, 
and who certainly is one of the best novelists of our day. 

I had had a good deal of pain with my sprained ankle 
and felt something of a wreck even now, a fortnight after 
it had been fastened up in its plaster cage. Maddox had, 
after all, joined the Emerys, instead of their re-joining 
him at Lucerne, so I had been alone with Sam for five 
days. 

A man is a selfish brute. I had been perfectly ready 
to go to Montreux on the Prince’s request, but the mo¬ 
ment I hurt myself I became preoccupied with my own 
feelings, and practically forgot Sandra and her Captain. 

I had written to Julia saying, naturally, nothing of 
Scarletta’s letter, but it had been Vine-Innes who an¬ 
swered me, at her request. 

“Julia,” he told me, in his typical neat writing, “is in 
163 


164 


Julia 


bed, taking one of these new-fangled rest-cures, and wants 
me to give you our news. ...” 

This he had done with all the exactness and lack of 
charm of an official report. 

The Duke, I read, was in London; Ives and his lady at 
the Cottage, wild with joy over their new gramophone; 
Eva Cripps somewhere “on the Continent”—oh, the sweet 
assumption of these islanders!—and Sandra was evidently 
having “the time of her life” in Switzerland. He hal¬ 
lowed the slang phrase by what he would for some reason 
have called “inverted commas,” which means nothing, in¬ 
stead of “quotation marks,” which is explanatory and 
simple. 

Still, it was a friendly letter, and evidently written with 
the kind intention of pleasing both his wife and that 
American writing chap, as Sandra, in a wicked mood, had 
told me he called me. 

“Don’t worry about my wife,” the letter had gone on, 
“it’s only that that tiresome business of Sandra’s last 
spring was a little too much for her. Julia is very sensi¬ 
tive, though you have probably never noticed it. . . 

And that had been ten days ago. 

All I knew of Sandra and the Scarlettas was that they 
had been, four days ago, still at Montreux, and presently, 
putting down my book, I began to wonder how things 
were going on between the girl and Captain Midwood. 

Hearing Sam moving about the room behind I called 
out to him to bring my dispatch-box, meaning to send the 
Prince a line asking for news. 

At the sound of my voice the old man in the next bal¬ 
cony slewed round and looked at me, his fine, heavily-lined 
face softening into a smile. 


Julia 165 

It was Professor Granchi, whom Amici had called in 
consultation over Sandra. 

We chatted for a moment from our two perches, 
and then suddenly he said, “I am glad to see you, 
Signore; very. May I come to your room for a mo¬ 
ment ?” 

And presently Sam had settled him comfortably in a 
chair, and left us alone. 

“I have,” the old savant began, “just arrived from 
Montreux.” 

Sandra again, I thought; was she never to leave me in 
peace ? 

“Your friend and my young patient,” he rumbled on 
over his bulging, wrinkled waistcoat, “was there.” 

“Yes, I know.” 

He looked at me thoughtfully. “She is,” he resumed 
after a pause, “very nervous. Hervosissima.” 

“Yes—but Prince Scarlett a wrote me not long ago that 
he had never seen her looking so well—or perhaps,” I 
rectified, “so pretty. It is, however, in Sandra’s case 
practically the same thing.” 

“How long ago did he write you that, Signore ?” and I 
saw that something had happened, and that he would, if 
it could be done without involving a breach of profes¬ 
sional etiquette, like to tell me about it. 

I opened my dispatch-box without a word, and handed 
him that first letter of the Prince’s. 

“Signore—I am sorry, but I cannot read English.” 

So I translated the letter to him, and he sat, his big 
puffy white hands lying loose on his billowy stomach, his 
wise old eyes half shut. 

“Yes,” he said when I had finished, “that is just what 


166 Julia 

the Principessa told me. A charming lady, the Prin- 
cipessa. . . .” 

“But what is wrong?” I cried, “surely she can’t he ill 
again. . . 

He shook his head. “Ho. It is, I believe, her lady 
mother who is ill—in England. A lady whom I admire 
and respect.” 

“But Sandra, Professore. You see, but for this 
wretched foot of mine, I should have been told all about 
it a fortnight ago by the Prince himself. . . 

“Yes. It is, then—or might become—the same thing 
as before. In Pome.” 

I swore softly in Italian, not sorry, but sheerly exas¬ 
perated, and full of indignation on Julia’s account. 

“Captain Midwood ?” I asked. 

“Ah, then you know him? A delightful young man.” 

“I have neither seen, nor heard of him, except for 
what Prince Scarletta says in the letter you have just 
heard.” 

“I see. Then,” the big, gentle old man went on rumi- 
natingly, his eyes, like mine, on the still sunlit lake, “I 
will give you my opinion as I gave it to the Principe. 
The charming young lady is very highly strung—she is 
neurotic in a high degree. She will enjoy better health 
when she has had a couple of babies. I therefore ad¬ 
vised the Princess to consider the possibility of this Cap¬ 
tain—his name I forget—marrying her.” 

“But—I read you what the Prince said ?” 

“Ah, yes; that the inclination was on the lady’s more 
than on the gentleman’s side ? Signore—I have found in 
the course of a long life that, whereas all women regard 
marriage as a desirable thing, all men look on that blessed 


Julia 


167 


state with distaste, until they meet a woman whom they 
can win only by accepting its—shall we say garlands V’ 

He smiled whimsically. He was a charming old fellow. 

“And you think this Midwood is in love with Sandra ?” 

“I have talked with him—his French is better than 
mine—and without, of course, speaking of himself or the 
young lady, he has let me see that he is impressionable 
and passionate by nature, and that in a way he responds 
to the very flattering penchant of so charming a mees.” 

“Per Baccho, so did poor Lensky respond in a way, and 
look what happened to him !” 

“That is different. It is,” he added, rising with some 
difficulty from his chair and smiling down at me, “much 
to be regretted that you, sir, could not go to Montreux as 
the Prince and Princess were greatly hoping that you 
could. They thought that you, as a writer, would be able 
to understand the two people concerned.” 

“Rubbish!” I cried crossly, “we writers know very 
little, instead of very much, about human nature. We 
classify, label too much; we forget that every human 
being is a freak. Besides,” I added, laughing, “I don’t 
at all see myself hobnobbing with a young English officer!” 

“Ah well, we shall see. I gave your young friend a 
harmless sleeping draught which she will take, and some 
good advice that she will not take, and—I told the Princess 
this: ‘If your daughter is too ill to come out and inspect 
this young man, then have her husband come.’ ” 

We shook hands, and I ate my dinner thinking that 
Captain Midwood must be a good deal of a worm. 

“Why,” I growled over my omelette, “doesn’t he either 
propose to her or clear out!” 


168 


Julia 


[ H ] 

The next day, to my amazement, Scarletta appeared in 
my room before I was out of bed. 

He was gaily dressed and looked thoroughly pleased 
with life in general. “They are,” he announced, kissing 
me on both cheeks in his delight, “engaged.” 

“Yes,” he explained later, beginning at the beginning 
as I had begged him to do; “I flatter myself that in a 
large measure it is my doing. Darling Sandra, she is 
such a sweet child! ‘Muzio/ I said to myself, ‘you belong 
to the family, in fact you are very nearly her grandfather. 
? Tis ? ”—he broke into English—“ ‘up to you to help her.’ 
There she was, you must know, caro Grigetto, growing 
from hour to hour more ill and nervous—at first I thought 
she was going to have an attack of malaria, so like it was 
to the way she looked at Aquila! She could not eat, and 
she had such dreadful headaches. Ambra and I, we said 
to each other, ‘My dear—malaria!’ And then, I, being 
a man of the world and a Sicilian, I began to understand, 
and to see that when he, this Meedwood, was there—no 
headache, no nerves, and a divine hunger! Ah, McEad- 
den, you and* I have known what it is to suffer from love. 
I have known that pain often—always, till I met Ambra, 
I was in love. How,” he added gravely, “I love, which is 
different. But our poor Sandruccia—ah, it was piteous. 
So when you could not come I made up my mind. And 
—after* a week or so, my son, I—acted.” 

“Dear me,” I murmured, “what did you do?” 

“Aha, it was very simple. I did as any Sicilian does 
in such a case. I asked him, with the greatest tact, what 
his intentions were.” 


Julia 


169 

I could only stare, quite feeble with horror, and after 
a pause he went on delightedly, “He is a charming fellow, 
and a gentleman. ‘Prince/ he answered, ‘I am not a rich 
man, and to tell you the truth I have never thought of 
marriage-’ ” 

“Poor devil!” 

“What did you say ?” 

“Nothing. The point is what did he say ? After that 
promising beginning, I mean V 9 

“He told me as man to man that Sandra had attracted 
him so strongly that he had been on the point of”—again 
he burst into his beloved English—“ ‘doing a bunk.’ ” 

“But if he wanted to do a bunk ...” I protested, 
aghast. 

“Wait. I asked him then if he would not wish to marry 
her if he were rich (for I am rich, you know, and she is 
nearly my granddaughter).” 

I had by now begun to see that it might have been 
just possible for him* to do this appalling thing in an 
inoffensive way. His good faith was so obvious, and he 
was so plainly of quite another blood from ours of the 
north, poor dear man, for all his devotion to England and 
her ways. 

“Yes. Well, what did he say to that V 9 

“He said that she was enough of a syren to make any 
man lose his head.” 

“And then . . . V 9 I groaned. 

“Then I”—he gave a great laugh, showing all his 
teeth—“I whistled a bar of Mussolini’s ‘Youth/ and—she 
came out on the verandah, and I went in.” 

And that, it appeared, was all. Midwood had sent a 
wire to Yine-Innes, asking his consent to a provisional 



170 


Julia 


engagement and the wily Prince had sent another at the 
same time saying, “Midwood most desirable, advise con¬ 
sent.” 

“I signed it,” he added, “by Ambra’s name as well as 
mine, because of course Humphrey knows her better than 
he knows me.” 

“I see. And the answer?” 

He took it from his pocket and handed it to me: 

“Arriving Montreux Saturday.— Humphrey.” 

“And this is Sunday!” 

“Yes. He is there on duty and I am here to see my 
sister who is at the Luzernerhof and . . . you, of course, 
dear friend.” 

I learned further that Yine-Innes and Midwood had got 
on very well together, and that though the much-aided 
suitor was not rich he yet had “a place,” and quite enough 
to keep a wife in ease. 

“He has,” the Prince added finally, “to go to India in 
November, so the wedding is to be very soon.” Then, 
laying one of his handsome hands on my arm, and beam¬ 
ing at me with delight, he added: “We have decided, as 
dearest Julia has been ordered to a warm climate for the 
winter-” 

“Oh, no!” I cried, “you must not send the poor girl 
to India on another woman’s honeymoon!” 

He shook his head. 

“Ah, no, Carissimo. It is that we have decided that 
on November the eighteenth the wedding will take place 
in Pome, in your house.” 



Julia 


171 


[ in ] 

As I re-read the above, I see that Scarletta sounds like 
a fool and an intrusive clown. He was neither. 

Long after, when he and Sandra had come back from 
India, I asked Barton Midwood what he had thought of 
Scarletta on the famous occasion of the Sicilian’s asking 
him his “intentions.” 

“I thought nothing about it—in the sense you mean,” 
he answered seriously; “he was perfect.” 

And I must add that when he told me of “their” de¬ 
cision that the marriage was to take place in my house, 
I too thought nothing of it, in the sense I had indicated 
to Midwood. 

He, the Prince, was so thoroughly kind, and so de¬ 
voted to the family into which he had married; his man¬ 
ners were, though outwardly elaborate, so inwardly sim¬ 
ple, and (and perhaps this was a very potent reason) he 
was so handsome in his bright-coloured, glossy way, that 
it never occurred to me to think he had taken too much 
on himself in my case, though his method with Mid¬ 
wood had scared me, for the moment, nearly out of my 
wits. 

(Midwood, Vine-Innes told me later, had on his side 
been horrified by the proposal about my house.) 

“But yes,” he, the Prince, repeated over and over again 
that morning, “he is charming. Ambra says that if he 
had been older and she younger, she would have boned 
him from Sandra, that he is a fascinating fellow. And 
Ambra,” he added innocently, “is a good judge.” 

I did not express my thought that if she was not she 


172 


Julia 


ought to he, and presently we sent Sam, who was highly 
delighted by the news, off to the telegraph office with a 
wire to Sandra and another to Julia, expressing my good 
wishes, and putting myself and my house at their entire 
disposition. 

I wrote a note to Midwood too, and a day or two later 
received from Vienna an answer that pleased me by its 
reticence and simplicity. 

He had been obliged to come to Vienna on business, and 
then, before the wedding, he’d have to go back to England 
to get his “kit” to Brindisi; he should thus be able to 
reach Rome only a day or two before the wedding, but 
in the meantime he thanked me for his share of my hos¬ 
pitality, and looked forward to meeting a man of whom 
Sandra was so fond. 

At this I felt a pang, but consoled myself, as I made 
my way slowly south, by planning to get the girl a very 
pretty old gold and ivory hand mirror I had seen not 
long before in an antiquity shop in the Babuino, for a 
wedding-present. 

“Dear Geay, 

“I am so happy! Thanks very much for your wire, 
and for having the wedding in your adorable house. 
Barton—oh, Gray, he is a dear, and you are sure to like 
him!—has gone to Vienna on some business about some¬ 
thing or other, so Daddy and I are rushing back to 
Mummy this very evening as ever is. She is better, 
Father says, but must make the journey very slowly, as 
she is so weak, poor darling. He will take her to Italy, 
and Granny and I meet in Paris—for clothes! 

“Isn’t it wonderful that we are going to India? I’ve 


Julia 173 

always longed to go, and of course it is the place for a 
honeymoon. 

“Now don’t laugh at me, Grigetto, for what I am 
going to say is very serious. I am dreadfully ashamed 
of having been such a fool last spring. I can’t imagine 
what made me, for I never really loved poor Lao at all. 
Wasn’t it dreadful his shooting himself ? (Amy Laving- 
ton told Mummy about it.) 

“No, and this, too, is where you mustn’t laugh. That 
with Lao was quite different from this. Not the same 
thing at all. I was a little ass! 

“Daddy—and you know how particular he is—likes 
Barton awfully, though poor B. had to go off the very 
morning Daddy arrived, so that they really only just met. 
He said, ‘He’s a sahib, my dear, so mind you are good to 
him.’ Wasn’t it quaint? Now good-bye, dear, kind man. 
I shall be so glad to see you, and to have you see me now 
that I am really good again, and not a nuisance to every 
one. Daddy has been a pet about my trousseau, and 
Granny is to go to Paris in a day or two, with funny old 
Muzio, and I join her there, when I’ve said good-bye to 
Dukie and Steppy and one or two others. A wedding 
at King’s Camel would have been lovely, but the doctors 
—two of them—say Mummy must go south before the 
mists come. 

“Isn’t it funny to think of the darling being seedy ? I 
can’t remember her ever being ill, but I suppose she 
caught cold somewhere. Give my love to Sam, and tell 
him I expect him to eat a huge piece of my wedding- 
cake. 

“Good-bye. Love. 


“Sa^deuccia.” 


174 


Julia 


“King’s Camel, 
“October 5th . 

“Dear Gray, 

“Thanks for your letter. Yes, I am really better, but 
not quite strong yet, and I’m sure Italy will be better 
for me than dear, damp King’s Camel. Sandra is here, 
looking so pretty and so well—thank Heaven for Barton, 
who really must be charming. Even Humphrey says he 
is a dear. I was shocked and grieved over poor M. de 
Lensky’s death. What a dreadful thing, Gray. I can 
see him now, so handsome and full of life. I do hope 
he didn’t really worry about Sandra—I mean at the last. 
If only he could have known how quickly she got over it! 
That is youth, of course. 

“Barton seems to be quite different from Lao. His 
letters are very quiet, almost grave, and I do like his 
handwriting, as you did. He gave Sandra a delightful 
ring, a carved emerald, very old, set in that beautiful 
pale gold, with his coat-of-arms on it. It belonged to 
his father, but he had it made smaller. The engagement 
ring was his mother’s—a very good diamond. Dear Gray, 
you were so kind to my little girl when she was ill and, 
poor child, rather foolish. I know you’ll be glad when 
you see how real love has changed her. She is so much 
less restless, so much more gentle. Ah, how I shall miss 
her—she goes very soon to Paris, where Mamma and 
Muzio are. Dear Mamma is going to see about the trous¬ 
seau, as the doctor won’t let me, and Humphrey is taking 
me on the twentieth to Naples, by steamer. We shall go 
to Amalfi for a few days as the sea-air is supposed to be 
good for me, and then arrive at your dear friendly house 
about Nov. 10th. I shall be glad to see you, and you 


Julia 175 

mustn’t be alarmed by my looking rather thin, and very 
old. 

“My dear love to yon, best and kindest of friends, 

“Julia Vine-Inhes.” 

Sam and I went home very slowly, stopping in various 
places for a few days each, and at Florence for nearly 
two weeks, finally reaching Rome on November 2nd. 

It was a bad autumn, chill and rainy, and I settled 
down at once like a snail in his shell, with the determina¬ 
tion to be dislodged by nothing until the sun came back. 

Concetta had got the house in beautiful order, and 
filled it with the growing plants that are so comforting 
in the winter, and she had, in view of the coming fes¬ 
tivities, engaged one or two new servants. 

Being tired, I let no one know of my return, not even 
Piero and Cesarina Monteleone. Vine-Innes had writ¬ 
ten me that the wedding was to be a very quiet one, by 
Julia’s doctor’s orders, and gone on to say: “You will 
understand, my dear McFadden, that the fact of our con¬ 
senting to our only child’s wedding taking place anywhere 
but at King’s Camel shows how anxious we have all been 
about my wife’s health. The Duke is very much disap¬ 
pointed about it, and so are all our relations and friends, 
but Dr. Maxwell of Harley Street was most imperative 
about getting her south before the chill and cold of our 
English winter set in. My father-in-law and his wife 
will of course be in Rome for the event, and also my 
mother-in-law and her husband. I believe Amber and 
Muzio are giving the child his mother’s pearls. The Duke 
has sent a very generous cheque. It is most kind of you 
to put Julia and me up, as well as Sandra. We, Julia and 


176 


Julia 


I, will arrive, if that is convenient to you, the eleventh 
of November, and when the young people have gone, I 
am sending her to Sicily with her mother for the win¬ 
ter. . . 

I of course knew from these letters that Julia’s condi¬ 
tion was worse than any of them dared to admit, and 
I was very much worried about her, but when I saw her 
at the station I realised that I had after all not been 
prepared for the truth. She must have lost twenty 
pounds in weight, she was intensely pale, and under her 
small black hat I saw two patches of snow-white hair. 

Her hand was hot, and shook a little in mine as I 
greeted her, and for a moment neither of us spoke. Then, 
as Vine-Innes, who was seeing to the luggage with Sam, 
came towards us, she said to me hastily: “Please don’t 
say anything about my looks, Gray. . . .” 

The next day when she was rested the change was less 
startling, but I saw that she had put a little colour on 
her cheeks, and this seemed to me infinitely pitiful. 

“What is the matter, Julia?” I asked her. 

“I have had—and still have a little—malaria, Gray.” 

“Honour bright ?” 

“Honour bright,” she returned, smiling; “only—I was 
very unhappy about Sandra as well, of course.” 

“Yes.” 

“And—other things are bad sometimes, too. . . 

She spoke with evident reluctance, but as if her sense 
of mental clarity forced the words to her lips. I knew 
that she thought it only fair to tell me the whole truth. 
I said no more,, but changed the subject. 


CHAPTER X 

[ i ] 


t |1HE Prince and Princess arrived with Sandra and a 
good many trunks, about which there was great ex¬ 
citement, two days later, and I saw very little of Julia, 
who clung to Sandra in a way that the girl seemed to 
understand and respond to. She was very gentle and 
sweet with her mother, though apparently she did not 
notice Julia’s extreme delicacy, and more than once I 
found them sitting in silence, Sandra curled up on a 
cushion by Julia’s chaise-longue, hand in hand, talking 
softly. 

Sandra was looking very pretty, and her huge eyes had 
a softer light than I had ever seen in them. Even Sam 
noticed this. 

“Beckon Miss Sandra’s awful sorry lose her Ma, Mas’ 
Gray,” he said once. “Getting in love sump’n like gettin’ 
religion, seems to me—kinder meltin’. . 

Sandra certainly seemed melted, and the Princess,^ 
whose new clothes were absolutely dazzling, assured me 
the change had begun on the very evening Midwood had 
asked her to marry him. “Lucky child,” the old butter¬ 
fly sighed, “she has found her Muzio at the very begin¬ 
ning.” It was, I reflected, an excellent thing that she 
knew nothing of poor de Lensky. 

Mr. Mackay, the Church of England chaplain, was to 
marry the young couple on the 18th in his little church, 
and that evening they were to go to Vienna for a few 
days, sailing from Brindisi on the 27th. 

177 


178 Julia 

Sandra had insisted on asking the Stauntons to the 
breakfast, and I had asked Julia to let me invite Piero 
and Cesarina. JSTo one else was to come. 

Midwood was expected on the 15th, but on the morn¬ 
ing of that day Sandra had a telegram from him, sent 
somewhere in Carinthia, saying that he could not reach 
Rome till the 16th. 

On the 16th we had promised to dine, all of us, at the 
Stauntons, but in the afternoon I was laid low by an 
abominable headache and rang up and made my excuses. 

Donna Crescenza’s pretty voice bubbled over the wires 
with regrets, expressed in her enthusiastic, amusing Eng¬ 
lish. “Oh, but that is beastlee, Mr. McFadden-y. I am 
so sorry. Rotten. We see you then at the wedding, 
yes?” Then she asked how Julia was, and was delighted 
to hear that she was better. 

Julia really was better. I think she had at first feared 
for the durability of Sandra’s happiness, and as the days 
passed and the girl continued in her new, quiet bliss, 
her mother began to believe that this time it would last; 
that Midwood evidently was the right man for her be¬ 
loved (unadmittedly-by-her), troublesome, child. 

Poodle Ives and his lady had arrived the day before 
the Stauntons’ dinner-party, of which they were to make 
a part, and at half-past seven I said good-bye to my guests 
for the evening. 

I was up, lying on the sofa in the library, too ex¬ 
hausted by pain to move much, but quite well enough to 
admire the new gowns and their wearers. Julia wore 
white, and Sandra black, and they both looked very well. 
Julia’s new slenderness I noticed had, despite the white 
hair her mother so disliked, given her an oddly youthful 


Julia 179 

air. Her face, delicately painted, was serene, her hands 
cool and dry. 

Sandra was wildly excited over the arrival of Midwood 
the next day, but her excitement was quiet and very be¬ 
coming. 

“Your young man,” I observed, “will like you in that 
dress, Sandruccia. . . .” 

“My young man will like me in any. And,” she added 
affectionately, “isn’t Mother a dream to-night!” 

“She is.” 

Julia laughed, a gentle little laugh of pleasure. 

“Tell Daddy it is time we went, darling. . . .” 

When we were alone she said to me: “I am so much 
better, Gray, and I want you to know. I have been un¬ 
fair to Sandra sometimes, and I am ashamed of it! I— 
I have even thought sometimes that she—she didn’t love 
me.” 

“Oh, Julia!” 

“Yes, Grigetto, I have. Oh, we quiet, silent people 
are every bit as bad as the talkative ones. Worse per¬ 
haps, for we brood. And she does love me, Gray. She 
has been wonderful since her engagement.” 

“Yes, she is very sweet, dear.” 

I can see her now as she looked down at me with her 
grave and tender smile. 

“And—about him ...” she went on slowly. “I want 
to tell you that, now I am so happy about Sandra, it is 
much easier to bear. Time does help, too, you know. It 
can’t, I think, really kill, but it can dim , and Sandra’s 
happiness is like—like a great light that makes every¬ 
thing else less distinct. . . .” 

“Thank God for that, dear.” 


180 Julia 

“I do, Gray! I thank Him with every breath I draw.” 
When they had gone I had some broth, and lay for a 
time staring into the fire and wondering about many 
things. 


[ n ] 

It was about nine o’clock when, on noticing from my 
window that the moon was flooding the town with its 
light that is neither gold nor silver, I decided to go for 
one of my slow little night-prowls. 

I love to stroll round the Eoman streets in the evening, 
watching the people enjoying themselves after their day’s 
work, and the quiet neighbourhood in which my old pal¬ 
ace stood was well adapted to my needs. 

Telling Sam I should be back in half an hour, I went 
downstairs and out. 

It was, I remember, cold and still, and the shadows 
lay as black and clean-cut as silhouette-paper in the grey 
of the streets. I turned to the left, went past the Palazzo 
Earnese, and then up a long, narrow street that, in its 
sudden elbow-like turnings, lay rather a jointed toy snake 
in the moonlight. 

I was very happy, and, I think, not ungrateful for my 
happiness. Sicily would be good for Julia, and the Prin¬ 
cess had invited me to go and stay with them, too, in their 
East Coast villa. I determined that never again would 
I live as I had drifted into living during the two years 
before I finally paid my often-deferred visit to King’s 
Camel. “It was damn silly,” I thought, “and I was 
morbid, and bitter, and detestable, till these dear people 
took me out of my silly self. . . 


Julia 


181 


And I resolved, as I came out into a little star-shaped 
piazza, where an invisible fountain trickled musically, 
that I would go to Kitty Emery’s wedding in Boston at 
Easter. “They are charming people, too,” I thought, 
“and if I’m able I will ‘hop’ across the Continent to San 
Erancisco and see the young couple.” 

At the angle of two of the streets that made a star of 
the piazza was the back of some old palace, and in the 
basement, down two steps, was a tiny restaurant to which 
I had sometimes gone. 

As I sauntered past it the door opened, and, thank 
God, a smell of frying onions met my nose. I had eaten 
nothing but broth all day, and the sudden hunger that 
sometimes follows a bad headache came over me with 
a kind of shock. 

Eried onions. I would eat liver and fried onions, and 
be a man again. So down I went, and opened the red- 
curtained glass door. 

It was a vaulted cellar that would have been very dark 
but for the dingy whitewash that had been roughly slopped 
over its uneven stones and plaster. 

Six or seven tables, cleanly spread with coarse cloths, 
and battered forks and knives, stood about the sanded 
stone floor, and at the far end, at an open fireplace and a 
charcoal stove on which various pots bubbled and hissed, 
a little old hunchbacked woman stood, busy with her 
cooking. 

Three men, one of whom was the proprietor of the 
place, were playing cards and drinking almost black wine 
at one table, a boy and girl, evidently sweethearts, were 
dropping cables of macaroni down their wide-open mouths, 
their left hands firmly clasped, at another. Otherwise 


182 


Julia 


the room seemed to he empty. I sat down, ordered my 
fried liver and onions, and took up a newspaper. 

It was warm and cosy. I felt very much at ease in 
my corner, and the reaction of physical well-being after 
pain was as acute as the pain had been. 

I was eating my supper when suddenly glancing up I 
saw, at a far corner, his elbows on his table, his face hid¬ 
den in his hands, a man. 

I did not recognise him, I could not see his face, but 
it is true that the sight of him was like a sudden knife- 
edged wind to me, and I shivered. 

Then I had to check a strong desire to rise very softly 
and creep out before he saw me. He was in deep shadow, 
and sat beyond the card players. On the table beside him 
stood a carafe of wine, untouched, and an empty glass. 

I sat staring at him full of dread that was all the 
worse for being formless, and then he looked up and saw 
me. It was the man of the Channel boat, Jim. 

After a minute he came over to me. “This is—queer,” 
he said abruptly. 

“Very. Have you followed her here?” My voice 
sounded harsh. 

“She—good God, no. Is she here?” 

He looked dishevelled and miserable, but his deep eyes 
were sincere. “I beg your pardon, I ...” I stammered. 

He laughed. “And I yours. For being in Rome. 
Which, however, I really, under the circumstances, can’t 
help,” he answered with intense bitterness. After a pause 
he added: “Am I allowed to ask if she is all right ?” 

“I am not your judge, nor her keeper. She is here 
with her husband and daughter. She is very happy.” 


Julia 


183 


It seemed to me as I studied the despair in his face 
that he must have some other, some more recent trouble 
than his love for Julia. He literally looked as if some¬ 
thing were squeezing the life out of him. And to do him 
justice a certain relief cleared his eyes as I answered his 
question. 

“A-a-h!” he said slowly. “May I have a drop of your 
wine ?” 

“My dear fellow, hadn’t you better have some food 
first ? This black wine is very strong. . . .” 

He took my bread and began breaking great bits off 
it and crunching them rapidly with his strong teeth. 

“I thought,” I went on after a minute, “that you were 
still in South America.” 

“Came back unexpectedly. About some money that 
has been left me. Only got to Rome this evening. . . .” 

“I see. Is—is anything wrong?” 

Those lower teeth of his looked very fierce now as he 
laughed. “Ah no, of course not. Isn’t God in His 
Heaven?” And his voice and looks made of the trite 
line a quite new blasphemy. 

I was intensely sorry for him, but I was bent on his 
getting away without Julia’s having felt—as, so strongly 
did his personality affect me, I began to fear she might 
feel it—his presence. 

“Will it help you,” I asked gently, “if I tell you a 
little about her? Just something for you to think about 
when you have gone away?” 

Again that jarring, miserable laugh, “Ah,” he returned, 
shoving his big shoulders back, and raising his eyebrows, 
“I shall have plenty to think about when I have, as you 


184 Julia 

so appropriately call it, ‘gone away.’ That’s what they 
call it, you know. . . .” 

I remember swallowing with difficulty, as if my throat 
had been sprayed with cocaine. 

“What—what—who calls what?” 

“Why,” he answered, pouring out more wine and 
splashing it in a mulberry stain over the table-cloth, 
“when the bride and groom go away. Pm here to be 
married.” 

It was, or seemed, a long time before I heard my own 
voice, from somewhere in the vaulted ceiling, say quietly: 
“Then you are Barton Midwood.” 

He nodded. “Yes. But how the deuce did you 
know ?” 

Absolute, gone-under-foot dismay, which is a kind of 
mental earthquake, cannot be described, and that is what 
I felt then. 

I remember his telling me that his mother and his 
godmother had always called him “Jim” and that that 
was why he had given the name to Julia as a memory; 
I remember his jerky, shamed explanation of his engage¬ 
ment. “She is a—a very attractive girl, and—Julia is 
gone for ever—by God, I sometimes wish she were dead. 
It would be easier that way—and she —she is fond of me, 
poor child. . . 

His scant, broken phrases made the situation clearer 
perhaps than any logical narrative could have done. I 
noticed that he had no word of excuse for himself, that 
his most acute suffering was for the girl who expected 
him to make her happy. 

“I did fairly well in South America,” he said, “too 
busy and too tired to think much, you know. And then 


Julia 


185 


I got a sharp go of fever and had to go North. That was 
had. Too comfortable up there by the sea, too many 
women about, too much music. Christ,” he broke off 
savagely, “how I hate music!” 

After a bit: “If I 7 d gone straight back South, I should 
have been all right. But I had to come over here—to 
Ireland, and then to Vienna on business. An old cousin 
of mine left me some money, and a lot of Viennese shares. 

. . . And then I got a job in India for six months, and 
took it, because being over here had upset me, disgruntled 
me, and I felt fed up with the Amazon. . . .” 

It was now that I began to thank God for the smell of 
frying onions that had lured me to the Buca. It was 
suddenly clear to me that as this poor wretch was bound 
to meet Julia the next day, I must prepare him for it. 
And then, I thought, I should have to tell her who Barton 
Midwood was. 

He was a little calmer now, and I made him eat some¬ 
thing. “If you can’t go through with it,” I risked, cold 
with the thought of Sandra, “you ought to say so—to 
your fiancee—at once. If you are strong enough to carry 
it out, you must do it decently.” 

“You are right. Oh, I’m strong enough! Bemember, 
you had no right—no one had any right—to see me as 
I have been this evening. That was a private matter— 
a breakdown such as many a man has had inside his own 
four walls.” 

“I know. And it was probably your worst hour. A 
pretty young thing like Sandra-” I broke off ap¬ 

palled, but he was not listening. 

How I told him I have never been able to remember, 
but I did tell him, and I was not surprised when he 



186 Julia 

laughed till he had to wipe his eyes. For I had heard 
such laughter once before, and knew what it meant. 

The card-playing men looked at us, mildly surprised, 
and then went on with their game, while Midwood grad¬ 
ually controlled himself. 

“I beg your pardon,” he said in his normal voice, “but 
—I’ve had no sleep for nights, and very little food. Did 
you really say that Sandra is —her daughter ?” 

“I really did.” 

“And—is she glad Sandra is marrying the Princess’s 
young man ?” 

“Yes. She has been ill—oh, only malaria!—and San¬ 
dra’s happiness is helping her get well.” 

“I see. And if for some reason I didn’t— couldn't 
marry Sandra?” 

“Oh, if you were imbecile enough,” I retorted crossly, 
“to kill yourself, Sandra would be broken-hearted, and 
Julia would probably die.” 

“I see,” he said again, but very quietly this time; add¬ 
ing as he looked at his watch, “then you must go home 
and tell her.” 

“Yes.” 

We rose, I paid my bill, and together we walked slowly 
along towards the nearest cab-stand, for I was spent. 

I told him as we walked that I had envisaged him as 
a young Captain in the regular army. 

“That isn’t my fault. And besides, I am young. I’m 
only forty-four.” 

“Of course. You see, they all spoke of you as ‘a young 
man,’ though, and that means-” 

“Oh, they —you mean the Prince and Princess ? Well, 
they are really old, and everything is relative.” 



Julia 187 

“Scarletta,” I protested, “is only ten years older than 
you!” 

“Of course, of course. But she is old, and he takes 
all his phrases from her. Oh, hell!” he added, with wild 
impatience, “What does all that matter !” We were 
silent for a few minutes, and then he burst out, “What 
is your name ?” 

“Gray McFadden.” 

“By Jove! I 7 ve been reading you up at Seal Harbour. 
Like your books awfully.” 

“Thanks.” 

At the cab-stand we parted. “Pll take some bromide,” 
he said, “and go to bed. And you-” 

“Pll go and tell her. By the way, you wired Sandra 
that you couldn’t get here till to-morrow-” 

“Lie. I—wanted twenty-four hours’ rest before I saw 
her.” 

We shook hands as a little cracked bell high over our 
heads struck eleven. 

“I’m—sorry, Midwood.” 

“Oh, I shall be all right. If I hadn’t always been such 
a susceptible fool I’d have cleared out in time, but in a 
way she fascinated me, and besides she was—a kind of 
anaesthetic, you know.” 

I nodded. 

He wrung my hand hard and dropped it. “Tell her 
from me,” he almost whispered, his face like a study in 
black and white, so dark were its lines, “that I’ll—do my 
best to make Sandra happy. . . .” 

I left him standing there. I had had enough. 




188 


Julia 
[ in ] 

It was ten o’clock the next morning before I saw Julia, 
for, Sam told me, she had come home early and gone 
straight to bed. 

In order to get her alone, and give her time to get over 
the shock before she had to face Sandra, I took her for 
a drive while Vine-Innes was out sight-seeing, and Sandra 
busy with her new maid, packing. 

We went to an old convent near the Porta Pinciana, 
a little forgotten place, the entree to which I had, and, 
walking up and down in the loggia, I told her. 

She was very quiet about it, saying little, and then 
only about Sandra. “Do you think he can make her 
happy?” she asked after awhile, and I shrugged my 
shoulders. 

“Oh,” I answered, “happy? I’m sure I don’t know. 
He’ll do his best. Besides, why should she be happy any 
more than you, Julia, or even he, poor devil ?” 

“Oh yes, Gray. She is young. . . 

It had hit her, I knew, full in the breast, but she bore 
it well, and I daresay she got some inexplicable feminine 
comfort out of knowing that her child’s husband was to 
be the man she believed to be the best in the world. I 
noticed that the thought of that poor devil’s torture hardly 
seemed to move her. 

It was probably a part of her motherhood to believe 
that Sandra could console any one for any loss. 

It rained on our way home, and the driver climbed 
down and put up the capote of the cab, and thus, in the 
deep gloom of its shadow, we drove home almost in si¬ 
lence. 


Julia 


189 


[ IV ] 

Just before dinner Sandra came rushing into the li¬ 
brary to tell us that Midwood had arrived. 

“He’s at the Grand,” she cried; “he just rang me up, 
and he’ll be here in fifteen minutes.” 

Vine-Innes smiled at her over his Times, and Julia 
kissed her. 

As for me, I thanked my gods when Cesarina Mon- 
teleone came in for a minute on her way home from a 
concert. The more people the better, I thought. 

Midwood, to meet whom Sandra had rushed out of the 
room, behaved admirably. He shook hands with Julia 
without a tremor, and then with Vine-Innes, who intro¬ 
duced him to Donna Cesarina, and me, and sat down. 

He was extremely well-dressed, I noticed, and his face, 
though very pale and thin-looking, was composed. I 
knew that he had been having the nearest thing to a 
Turkish bath his hotel could provide, for he had the ex¬ 
traordinarily clean and garnished air that only such pro¬ 
longed and searching ablutions can give. He stayed, 
quietly answering Sandra’s questions, and Vine-Innes’s, 
only a few minutes, and then rose, saying that he had 
barely time to get back to his hotel to change for dinner, 
which he was, of course, taking with us. 

Donna Cesarina had gone, and before he followed her 
he said to Julia: “I will do my utmost, Mrs. Vine-Innes, 
to make Sandra happy. . . .” 

And Julia smiled, and answered: “I am sure you will.” 

That was all. 

I went to my room and had Sam rub my foot, and 
drank a glass of brandy and soda, for however unmoved 


190 Julia 

they might have been, I was shaken to my not very stable 
foundations. 

The dinner-party, augmented by the Scarlettas and, of 
course, the Iveses, went off well, for Poodle, luckily, was 
in his best form and the Princess at her brightest, while 
Sandra’s bliss was at once a delightful and a tragic thing 
to see. 

Only once did I tremble, and that was when Sandra, 
looking up from her ice, cried out gaily: “Oh, but, dar¬ 
ling, you mustn’t call mummy ‘Mrs. Vine-Innes’!” 

“Nonsense, Sandruccia,” I put in hastily, “what should 
he call her!” 

“Not ‘mummy,’ surely,” laughed Poodle, his foot in it 
as usual. 

“Perhaps,” Julia’s voice sounded very gentle, “you had 
better call me as my husband calls his mother-in-law—by 
my Christian name.” 

“Of course!” several of them cried, and for a moment 
I feared for the poor wretch, whose nostrils had gone 
very white. 

“I ... I should be delighted . . .” he stammered, 
and Sandra, pointing a derisive finger at him, laughed. 
“Oh, he’s shy, my Big Man, he’s actually shy!” 

“Hush, Sandra,” Julia said, and then, turning to him 
again, she added, “Then it’s agreed that you shall call 
me Julia, and I will call you Barton.” 

That is all I remember of the evening. 


CHAPTER XI 
[ i ] 


rjlHE day after the wedding—which passed off very 
well—Julia, with her mother and Scarletta, went to 
Messina and the villa. She had not had one word alone 
with Midwood, and the Princess had more than once ex¬ 
claimed to me over their measured coldness to each other: 
“One would think,” the little old woman declared, “that 
they disliked each other!” 

“Perhaps they do,” I replied. 

“Yes, hut they don’t, for I have asked them— separately, 
of course. Julia said, ‘He seems very nice, Mamma/ and 
Barton said, ‘I think her delightful.’ ” 

“Well . . . ?” 

She shrugged her shoulders and skipped over a mud- 
puddle—we were walking on the Pincio—like a child. 
“Well— nothing, then, Gray. Only I am disappointed, 
somehow.” 

After a moment, with another skip, she added gaily: 

“It doesn’t much matter though, for by the next time 
they meet she’ll probably he grandmother to his son, and 
that is sure to break the ice!” 

I shuddered. 

Ives and his wife stayed on for a month, and I saw 
something of them, hut not much, for the old lady was 
a grim and conscientious sight-seer, and they spent most 
of their time in icy galleries and churches, which I always 
avoided. 


191 


192 


Julia 


When at last they had moved on to Naples, I began 
another book, and worked on it very steadily all through 
the winter. Julia wrote to me at Christmas, sending me 
a pretty white silk scarf she had knitted for me, and once 
or twice afterwards, but beyond telling me that her health 
was better, and that she was delighted with Sicily, her 
letters contained nothing of interest. 

The Princess, who, I gathered, had been seized with 
one of her letter-writing fits, sent me several long, illeg¬ 
ible scrawls, that I fear I didn’t read very carefully once 
I had found those parts that referred to Julia and to the 
Midwoods: “Julia is very well, and enjoying herself 
thoroughly,” was one phrase that stood out in those mauve 
pages, and “Sandra and Barton are, it seems, as happy 
as birds, and he says she is much admired. They are 
coming back, en route for South America, in April.” 

Julia’s next note informed me that she was going home 
by boat direct from Palermo. “Sandra and Barton,” 
she wrote, “are to reach King’s Camel early in May, 
and I, of course, want to have everything at its best for 
them.” 

It was in this letter that she wrote: “I am so glad you 
are going to spend the summer in Canada, dear Gray. 
It is sure to do you good, and so will next winter at San 
Prancisco. I hope they won’t have earthquakes while 
you’re there. But you will, of course,” (underlined) 
“come to us for the week Sandra and Barton are with us. 
Prom May fourth to May twelfth. Do not say no, Gray.” 

But I did say no, for I had already engaged my pas¬ 
sage from Naples to New York, for April tenth, and 
should only just get to Boston for Kitty Emery’s wed- 


Julia 


193 


ding. This I explained at length to Julia, but she did 
not reply, and it was midsummer before I had any direct 
news from her or hers. 

I say direct, because I met in Boston a man who had 
been with the Midwoods in India, and he told me several 
things about them. 

“Clever fellow,” this man said. “Pity he wastes 
his time in South America instead of sticking to his 
job-” 

“But I thought the Amazon was his job!” 

“Oh, dear, no. Civil engineering is what he trained 
for. He did a lot of consulting work before the War— 
that’s what that English firm sent him to India about—■ 
some new bridge, I think it was.” 

And I remembered that I had meant to ask Midwood 
about that job, his acceptance of which had gone for 
so much in keeping me in ignorance of his identity. How 
could I have connected the middle-aged South American 
Explorer, Jim, whom I had seen on the boat, with the 
Princess’s ‘young’ Captain Barton Midwood who was 
en route for India? The American also told me that 
Mrs. Midwood was much more popular in India than her 
husband. “He’s a nice fellow, of course,” he explained, 
“but a little surly, you know . . 

So that was what it had done to him! 

“He used not to be surly.” 

“Well, perhaps it’s only a mannerism, but he really 
is very silent. Has a queer, grim smile, too.” 

That I could understand. 

“Great friends of yours ?” Mr. Perkins asked, and 
I shook my head. “I hardly know him. Her father 



194 Julia 

and mother are—at least Mrs. Vine-Times is—old 
friends.” 

He nodded, obviously checking something he had been 
on the point of saying. I wondered what it was. 

It was still cool at Ste Angele when the Emerys, I, and 
Sam reached the Log Cabin, as they called their most 
comfortable house, and little ridges and patches of snow 
were still lingering in shady places. 

The air had a clean, raw edge to it, and the tree trunks 
still wore their dark, purplish winter look. 

I worked hard and slept hard, enjoying every minute 
of my stay, and when Mrs. Emery and a young niece 
known as Mouse, whom, she told me, she had borrowed 
as a stop-gap for Kitty, arrived in July, I was feeling 
better than I had felt for years. 

Mrs. Emery—“Peggy,” as I now began to call her—* 
stayed four weeks, and then insisted on taking me to Seal 
Harbour to her mother’s cottage, for August. 

I was glad to go with her; I was grateful to her for 
wanting me, as all solitaries will understand, and I had 
still another reason for being glad to go to that par¬ 
ticular place, for Sandra and Midwood were there, and 
Peggy, who had of course met them, advised me to go. 
“She’s extremely attractive, your little Sandra,” the big, 
wholesome, rosy-faced and -minded woman said to me, 
“but she is an awful goose, and—she’s fond of you. . . .” 

This ‘fondness’ of Sandra for me by no means gave 
me an unmixed pleasure, for now that her troubles were 
over, and she far away from Julia, I rarely gave her a 
thought, and when I did so I realised that if she 
had not been Julia’s daughter I might actually have dis¬ 
liked her. 


Julia 195 

However, a letter from Julia, at about this time, de¬ 
cided me, and I accepted Peggy’s invitation. 

Julia, writing from Craven Castle, where she was stay¬ 
ing with the Duke, urged me to go. 

“Now that you are in Canada,” she wrote, “do go to 
Seal Harbour and look up Sandra. It can’t be far. I’m 
not quite satisfied with her letters, and you can use your 
eyes and write me what you think about her.” 

I hated this idea, and wished Midwood would take his 
wife to South America and keep her there, but of course 
I wrote to Julia that I would do as she asked. 

We reached Mrs. Chittenden’s big house on the third 
of August, and the first thing I heard, that evening at 
dinner, was that the Midwoods were going to Newport 
the next day but one. 

So I rang up the house at which they were dining, 
and Midwood came to the telephone. 

I told him who I was and there was a perceptible pause 
before he answered, “Oh—how delightful.” But he was 
not delighted. 

He asked me to lunch the next day at their hotel, I 
sent my love to Sandra, and, after another pause, I rang 
off. 

Mrs. Chittenden, a charming old lady with hair like 
a piled up snow-drift, told me one or two things about 
the Midwoods before I went to bed. “She, the little imp, 
was ill earlier in the summer, and they sent her up here 
for the air. The air is wonderful,” she broke off to say, 
with pleasant pride, “isn’t it? . . . Oh, yes, she’s quite 
well again. Dances all night every night, you know, and 
is never quiet for a minute. So unlike my idea of Eng¬ 
lish girls! Very high-strung, isn’t she?” 


Julia 


196 

“She’s a naughty monkey,” I answered. “Her mother 
adores her, and Ives spoilt her. .... Tell me about 
Midwood.” 

“Oh, we are all very fond of Barton ” she declared, 
with innocent betrayal, “he has been here several times 
before, you know. He stayed with some cousins of my 
son-in-law, George Traill. At one time I thought he was 
rather fond of Jane Traill, George’s cousin, a splendid 
girl.” 

“Wasn’t he?” 

She laughed wisely. “Who knows! Mrs. Billy Cor¬ 
nelius came along just about that time—Violet King, you 
know—and where Vi is there is always trouble.” 

“Better-looking than Miss—Miss-” 

“Jane Traill? Ho. Jane is very handsome, and as 
good as gold; a little heavy, perhaps . . .” 

I laughed. “And the dangerous one is small, and 
not heavy, and—appealing?” 

“Good gracious, Mr. McFadden, how in the world did 
you know that?” she cried. “Peg, Mr. McFadden is a 
man-witch. . . .” 

[ n ] 

Sandra really did seem glad to see me. I found her 
alone in her little “side-piazza,” looking extremely pretty, 
and Americanised, in the new way of English girls. She 
was very nice to me, and gave herself great pains to 
please me. 

Oh, yes, she was well, and having a glorious summer. 
To-morrow they were going to Newport to stay with 
the Cronninshields—the Willy Cronninshields, of course. 




Julia 


197 


And she found me looking top-hole, and ever so much 
younger, and she had simply loved “Wild Honey.” 
Every one had loved it. Quite one of the best-sellers, it 
must have been. 

“Sandra,” I cut her short sternly, “what is the matter 
with you ? Why do you talk to me in this absurd way ?” 

Her famous blue flash was played on me, but without 
effect, and she stammered as if afraid: “What—what 
on earth do you mean?” 

I was, of course, “old” to her. I was her mother’s 
contemporary, and, however much age-values are muddled 
in these topsy-turvy times, in crises one comes back to- 
them. 

She felt, herself, I knew, like a naughty child, hauled 
before an authoritative elder. 

“Where is Barton?” I asked, seizing my advantage, 
and the toss of her burnished head showed that my surmise 
had been right. 

“Oh, Barton ” she said nervously, “I’m sure I don’t 
know where he is. He went out in a rage after break¬ 
fast-” 

“And you have been married not quite nine months.” 

She was silent, her heavy brows drawn down over 
her eyes, her lips looking suddenly as if they had been 
stung by a not very angry bee. 

“Sandruccia”—having made a false start, I went back 
and began over again. 

“If anything is wrong—beyond just the little hitches 
that happen in all young menages-” 

“Oh, for God’s sake, Gray,” she broke in brutally, 
“don’t preach. If there’s one thing I can’t stick, it’s 
that!” 




198 Julia 

“Neither can I, my dear. Perhaps,” I said, rising, 
“I had better go.” 

“Oh, no , yon idiot. Listen, Gray—I’m worn to a fraz¬ 
zle with dancing, and late nights, and—the 18 th Amend¬ 
ment. That’s what’s the trouble. And so is Barton. We 
get on each other’s nerves and ‘fratch,’ as Fountain says— 
and—that’s all. Besides,” she added postscript-wise, “he 
is twenty-two years older than I am.” 

“He was twenty-two years older than you when . . . 
you married him.” 

“Oh, don’t be so idiotic. Do you think I don’t know 
that ? Listen, Gray. Let’s go and have lunch. My maid 
is making you a cocktail-” 

“Never touch ’em. . . .” 

“Well—I do. And Barton will be in before long. He 
will surely condescend to come home and lunch when 
you are here. ...” 

“Who,” I asked, following her into her little sitting- 
room, “is the man to see whom your husband does not 
come home to lunch.” 

She burst out laughing, the hoarseness of her peculiar 
voice very marked. 

“Clever old Grigetto,” she jeered, “did he have the 
novelistic flair?” 

She drank the cocktail I had refused, and we went 
down the bare wooden stairs towards the dining-room. 
As we crossed the lower hall, Midwood came in, in flan¬ 
nels, a tennis racket in his hand. He greeted me in a 
friendly enough way and went on, telling us to begin 
lunch. 

A few minutes later he joined us, and sat down, facing 
the light. 



Julia 199 

He had, I thought, put on a little flesh since I had 
seen him, and he looked distinctly older. 

“Had a good morning, Sandra ?” he asked. 

She shrugged her thin shoulders, her painted lips 
curled. “Delightful, thanks,” she drawled, and suddenly 
I perceived in her a likeness to Eva Cripps, and remem¬ 
bered that they were cousins. 

“How,” she asked, “is the fair Jane?” 

“Miss Traill is quite well, thank you,” he answered in 
a tense, angry voice. 

Then he turned to me and put himself resolutely 
through his paces as the host. 

I was extremely uncomfortable, and throughout the 
meal detested the girl with all my heart. Hot for a 
moment did I believe what she obviously meant me to 
believe. The poor devil had been playing tennis with this 
Jane Traill, and that, I was sure, was all there was to it. 

More and more I wondered, as I answered and asked 
meaningless questions, about the answers to which none 
of us cared a fig, why she was so obviously trying to put 
him wrong in my eyes. And as we sat over our coffee, I 
knew. 

The man who joined us was a slim, fair young French¬ 
man with a heart-shaped mouth, as his countrymen call it, 
and a bracelet on his sunburnt wrist. 

I glanced at Midwood and saw that he was simply bored 
to death by the Frenchman’s presence. That powerful, 
fierce face of his had no trace of jealopsy in it. He was 
bored. 

And my heart sank. 

M. de-I never even grasped his name—was civil 

and chatty. He had “heard of”—at a hint from Sandra— 



200 Julia 

me and my novels very often. He was enchanted to know 
me. 

And meeting Midwood’s eye I read the dismal avowal 
that though he saw into the situation as well as I did, he 
was incapable of being angry about it. 

The Frenchman—“Toto” she called him—was plainly 
head over ears in love with her, and I noticed in her cer¬ 
tain symptoms I had seen before, that gave me to under¬ 
stand that she was in love with him. But they both 
played the game to the best of their not very brilliant 
ability, and, it was plain, greatly to their own satisfaction. 

a M. de-—,” Sandra informed me, unnecessarily (for 

they would have looked different had it been otherwise), 
“is also going to Newport. To visit his grandmother, Mrs. 
Holywell. Isn’t it delightful ?” 

“Very,” I returned dryly. 

Midwood gave a little laugh. 

“What are you grinning at, Barton?” his wife asked 
him, so rudely that my ears burned. He, however, re¬ 
mained unmoved. 

“My dear Sandra, may I not smile,” he asked, “at my 
own thoughts ? I beg your pardon, but I really did not 
hear your last remark. . . .” 

The Frenchman, for French he was, in spite of his New 
York mother, frowned, but said nothing, and a moment 
later Midwood rose. 

“It has been delightful to see you, Mr. McFadden,” 
he said, holding out his hand, “and I hope you will not 
mind my running away? We are off to-morrow, as 
Sandra will have told you, and I’m having some trouble 
about shipping my car to Newport. . . .” 

I was very much disappointed, for I had wanted to 



Julia 201 

have a talk with him, hut I could, of course, only shake 
hands with him, and wish him bon voyage. 

Shortly after lunch I took my leave, full of forebodings. 

[ in ] 

Mrs. Chittenden, on my return, and on my admitting 
that I did not like M. Toto, set aside her reserve and 
talked to me plainly. “It is,” she put it in a phrase I 
had known in my childhood, “as plain as the nose on your 
face. These young Englishwomen— well!” 

“Any worse than your own?” I asked mildly, having 
heard Lady Ives on the subject of “these young Ameri¬ 
can women.” 

“Oh, much, Mr. McEadden, much” the poor Boston 
lady assured me in good faith. “And poor Barton Mid¬ 
wood—every one is so sorry for him.” 

“He had been playing tennis with Miss Jane Traill.” 
My eyes were fixed on the sea. 

“Ha! Did he tell you so ?” 

“Ho. She did. Sandra, I mean.” 

“She would ” Mrs. Chittenden gave a little snort. 
“She’s a little wretch, Mr. McFadden. She knows per¬ 
fectly well—she must know—any one would know, after 

one look at Jane Traill’s face, that—that-” She 

broke off, too involved for disentanglement, adding a 
second later, as she took up the tea-pot: “She is trying 
to put the blame on poor Jane, and it is abominable of 
her!” 

For my part I confess that if Sandra had not been 
Julia’s daughter, I should have been perfectly willing to 
allow her to be cast to the hounds of public opinion, but 



202 


Julia 


as matters were I felt bound to stand up for her as best 
I could, and I did so. It was not of much use, and pres¬ 
ently I went to my room for a rest, feeling inclined to 
think, blackly pessimistic, that so long as Sandra was 
above ground there could be no peace for me. 

I was also much annoyed at Midwood’s cavalier treat¬ 
ment of me, and I should have come down to dinner in a 
very bad temper had not, just as I tied my tie, a note 
been brought to me from him. 

“Dear McEadden,” he wrote, 

“Do forgive me for being so rude to-day. Sandra is 
dining out and going on to a dance, but if you care to 
come over for a cup of coffee and a cigar at any time you 
can get away, I’ll be in the smoking-room. We could sit 
in our veranda if you like. 

“Barton Midwood.” 

It was easy to explain to kind old Mrs. Chittenden and 
Peggy Emery, and at about ten, Midwood and I sat down 
together very comfortably under the starlit sky. 

He was in evening dress, which betrayed, more clearly 
than his flannels had done, his increasing bulk, and I 
noticed that his hair, still only faintly streaked with grey, 
and still wavy, had receded a little from his forehead. 

His whole person had a queer, discouraged look that 
hurt me. 

“Hope you—understood ?” he began. 

“That’s all right, Midwood.” 

“It’s-” he paused, and then said slowly, “not much 

of a success.” 

“Ho. I’m sorry.” 



Julia 


203 


“So am I sorry, McFadden,” he answered suddenly, 
his right hand trembling as he raised his glass; “I’m 
damned sorry, but I swear to you that I did my best.” 

“It isn’t over yet,” I said. “It’s hard, I can see that, 
but—I suppose you’ll have to go on trying ?” 

“I suppose so. And mind you, it isn’t just this young 
pup of a Frenchman. It’s all wrong; she’s all wrong.” 

“And you ?” 

He was bending over his glass, and now, without mov¬ 
ing his head, he stared up at me through his thick eye¬ 
brows, which must have fringed his view of me. It gave 
him, that upward gaze, something of the look of an ani¬ 
mal; he reminded me of a hurt buffalo. “Oh, I’m all 
wrong, of course,” he said suddenly, sitting back. 
“Always have been.” 

There was a pause, and then he went on: “Did you see 
what she was driving at—about Jane Traill?” 

“I did. I could not help seeing.” 

“Quite so! Well, McFadden, so help me God there 
isn’t one word of truth in it, and, what is more, she— 
Sandra —fcnows it.” 

“I haven’t a doubt of it.” 

“Miss Traill is a girl— girl, she’s thirty-four! I’ve 
known her for years—a decent, quiet-voiced woman who 
likes me. Yes, and I like her, too. Any one would like 
her. And then,” he went on with a helplessness that 
might have been funny, considering his age compared to 
Sandra’s, if it had not been so bitter, “she tries to 
exonerate herself and that French boy by hinting things 
about Jane.” 

“1STever mind. You are going away to-morrow.” 

“Yes, my God. And wherever we go it’s the same 


204 


Julia 


thing. Upon my soul, I sometimes think she is mad, 
McFadden. Why, even in India—as soon as she had got 
sick of me-” 

After a pause he added very low, as if he were afraid 
of hearing his own voice: “And it didn’t take her long to 
get sick of me, and I doing my best the whole time. . . .” 

“Does it help you,” I asked, “to talk about it ?” 

“Yes, it does,” he cried, suddenly violent. “I’ve 
thought many a time that if I could talk it might 
help. ...” 

“In that case, go on.” 

But my voice had cooled him, and he was silent for 
awhile, and when he did speak he was calmer. 

“I am sorry to have lost my head,” he said quietly, “but 
I have really had a hell of a time.” 

“I can see that. It may do you good to know that Julia 
is well and—happy?” 

“How can she be happy!” he cried, incredulous. 

“Because she believes that Sandra—and you are . . .” 

“She can’t possibly think I am.” 

“She does. You must remember that Sandra was her 
greatest treasure. And you have Sandra.” 

“I see.” After a long silence he added, what all men 
seem to say when they are at a loss for a better phrase, 
“Women are queer . . .” 

I left him at a little after twelve, having promised, in 
exchange for his assurance that he meant to “carry on,” 
that I would lie to Julia. “Tell her that we are—in para¬ 
dise,” were his last words. 



Julia 


205 


[ IY ] 

That was in August. I spent Christmas in Southern 
California with Kitty Emery and her husband, and in 
April her small son, to my great delight, was given in 
baptism my names of “Martin Gray.” 

I had had a very happy winter, finished my book, and 
began, as most of us do, sooner or later, on film work. 

In May, Frank Maddox married a Philadelphia girl, 
and I stayed on for the wedding, leaving shortly after 
it for England, glad to go back after not having been there 
for two full years. 

Sam and I stayed a few days in London, and then went 
down to King’s Camel. 

Julia had written less frequently than she had done 
in the old days; Sandra and Midwood, whom I knew 
to have been in South America since the November after 
I had seen them at Seal Harbour, not at all; and from 
the fluent old Princess it was that I had drawn the little 
I did know about the family. 

The Duke’s death had, of course, been noticed in the 
American papers, and I knew from the Princess that he 
had left his famous sapphires to Julia, and his big pearl 
to Sandra. 

Lady Ives I knew to have had a slight stroke a year 
before, but understood her to be better again, and I had 
been glad to hear in each of the Princess’s letters that 
Julia was well and apparently happy. 

“Miss Sandra and the Captain won’t be here, I spec, 
Mas’ Gray ?” Sam asked, as we jogged along through the 
green June meadows that afternoon, and I shook my head. 

“Oh no, Sam, or the Princess would have told me.” 


206 Julia 

“Beckon Miss Julia’ll be mighty glad to see we-all.” 

“IsFo doubt. . . .” 

I knew that I was going to be very glad indeed to see 
her. That no news is good news may be open to doubt, 
but it is certain that, knowing nothing about Sandra and 
Midwood, I had gradually come to think, whenever I did 
think of them, which was not often, that they must be all 
right. 

Old Mrs. Chittenden, of whom I had become very fond, 
had written me once in a while, without mentioning them, 
and I knew that if she had heard any news about them 
she would have brightened her letters with it. 

“I suppose they are somewhere in South America, 
Sam,” I went on. 

But the two had so clearly stayed in my mind, during 
the rest of the journey, that when we got out at the station 
I was not really much surprised to see, waiting for me 
in the car, Sandra, all in black. 


CHAPTER Xn 
[ i ] 


S ANDRA was gay and talkative on onr drive to King’s 
Camel, giving me news of everybody in comet-like, 
inconsecutive flashes, and as the big car bowled us 
smoothly along, up and down the gentle slopes, past the 
little sleepy villages I had so liked that silver April day 
twenty-six months before, I absorbed, almost without 
knowing it, a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the state 
of things at King’s Camel. 

I learned: that Julia was very well, and busy with poor 
Steppy, who had remained, after her stroke, rather an 
invalid; that Poodle (sweeter and more of a love than 
ever) had gone in for literature, was writing “Sunny 
Days, by an old Diplomat”—“just wouldn’t the darling 
call it ‘Sunny Days’ ?”; that Granny-dear and her Prince 
were at King’s Camel, Granny-dear looking a perfect pet 
now that she’d stopped dyeing her hair (a little mottled 
and ring-straked, you know, but still lovely) ; Muzio sing¬ 
ing more divinely than ever. 

“And your father, Sandruccia?” I asked. 

“Ah, yes,” she said, her big eyes sliding round towards 
me, “Daddy. Well—he’s all right, Gray. And very glad 
you are coming. In short, dear kind man,” she resumed 
nonchalantly, “you are an amazingly popular person. I 
believe that if I hadn’t sat down on the tendency, you 
would have been welcomed with fireworks and garlands.” 
After a minute I asked her in what she had once, I 
207 


Julia 


208 

remembered, called, to old Mrs. Crittenden, who wrote it 
to me, my “raw” manner: “And how is—your husband ?” 

“Barton is well, thanks,” drily. 

“He’s here, of course ?” 

“Ho. He stayed two days and then ran for his life. 
He never could stand King’s Camel.” 

So that was it. Time, old scoundrel, I reflected, had 
once more failed to live up to his reputation. 

Amd I felt an unreasonable pang for having, during 
the last year and a half, given so little thought to the two 
—Julia and Midwood. 

“The Duke is here,” Sandra said suddenly, “and Eva 
Cripps. She is doing her best to marry him, but he is 
not having any, thanks so much.” 

“What kind of a man is he ? I am sorry the old gentle¬ 
man has gone. . . .” 

“Yes, Dukie was a dear. Well, Keggy isn’t bad,” she 
returned, adding, “Poor old Dukie rather wanted him to 
marry me—did you know it, Gray ?” 

“I remember hearing something about it. . . .” 

“Ah well—you won’t at least be surprised to see that 
I am having one of my outrageous flirtations with him,” 
she added with a laugh. 

“I should be surprised, all the same,” I returned. 

“Why?” 

“Because, my child, I know you pretty well by now, 
and I’d be willing to bet an eye-tooth that the Duke is 
not the man you are at present carrying on with!” 

I spoke jokingly, for all the truth in my words, and 
I was amazed when she turned on me with a great blaze 
in her eyes. 


Julia 


209 


“Some idiot has been lying about me,” she cried, her 
voice grating, “and of course you have believed it, Gray 
McFadden,” she cried fiercely, “you would ” 

“Sandra!” I was aghast, for she looked and sounded 
as though she hated me. 

For a moment she did not speak, and then, as we 
reached the top of the hill from which I had first seen 
King’s Camel, she held out her hand and tried to laugh. 
“I was a pig!” she cried. “Please forgive me.” 

I, of course, took her hand and said something conven¬ 
tional about its not mattering, but the little incident 
stayed in my mind, and rather spoilt my pleasure for 
the short rest of the drive. That something was going 
on was plain to me, and I had allowed myself for so long 
to assume that things had settled down into peace, that 
my disappointment was unreasonably sharp. 

I might have known, I thought, as we skirted the vil¬ 
lage green on which the very same children seemed to be 
playing who had played there two years ago, that, where 
that stormy-petrel of a young woman was, peace could 
never abide, but I had been too busy, as was my failing, 
with the people in my immediate surroundings, to think 
logically about those who were far away. 

“Every one wrote me, though,” came the excuse, “that 
she was well and happy”—and by “she” I, of course, 
meant Julia. 

The moat garden was glowing with flowers, like a 
brocaded ribbon between the rosy old house and the glau¬ 
cous water, and over the lovely twisted chimneys little 
plumes of smoke stood in the windless air. 

“There’s Mother,” Sandra exclaimed as we went under 


210 


Julia 


the archway. And there at the ivy-edged door she stood, 
just as she had stood that other time, her beautiful kind 
face full of welcome. 

When I had washed my hands she took me straight 
to the cedar-tree at the edge of the sunk garden, where, in 
the thick black shade, the tea-table stood waiting. 

Ives was there and the Prince, the Princess being at the 
cottage. 

“Prances doesn’t like being alone, poor dear,” Poodle 
explained. 

It was so sweet to me to be there with Julia that I 
wondered again and again why I had stayed away so 
long. Peggy and Kitty Emery and the rest of the people 
who had been so kind to me in America, taking me so 
generously into their lives, were delightful, and I loved 
them, but they were not Julia, I reflected, nor even 
Poodle. After all, they had not had to “take me in,” for 
in spite of the years that had divided our infrequent 
meetings I had in a way belonged to them ever since I 
had thrown my lemon through the then Lady Ives’s 
window in Rome. 

“I feel,” I said to Julia, when Sandra had strolled back 
to the house, “as if I had got home.” 

“And so you have, dear Grigetto,” she answered. 

“Quite right, my dear. Grigetto’s one of the family,” 
Poodle agreed cordially, and I was touched. 

The little old Adonis had changed but slightly, and his 
clothes were as dandified as they had been in my child¬ 
hood. He even had his beloved carnation in his button¬ 
hole. Beside him the Prince, fifteen years his junior, 
looked heavy, and fatter than he really was. 

The Prince had developed a double chin, and his waist 


Julia 


211 


should not have been accentuated by an orange silk cum¬ 
merbund ; he was, I thought as we talked of many things, 
surely the last man alive to wear one. 

Julia told me the news. Vine-Innes had been made a 
J.P. and was also taking a keen interest in politics; the 
Princess was sick of her house in Bath, and was going to 
sell it 

“She wants to live in Sicily, but we won’t let them go 
for good,” she added, “and besides, Huzio adores Eng¬ 
land, don’t you, Muzio ?” 

“I do. I am going to buy Gridiron House and come 
here for all the summers. Ambra,” he went on with a 
chuckle that rippled all over his big body, “can stay in 
Sicily if she likes. . . .” 

“Sandra has grown,” I said after a while, as a new 
young footman carried the tray back to the house, his tail- 
buttons twinkling in the sun. 

“I am afraid she’s only thinner,” was Julia’s reply, a 
little cloud on her face. 

“Barton,” chirped Ives, “will be sorry to miss you. . . .” 

“Where is he ?” 

“He’s gone to stay with a friend somewhere in 
Gloucestershire,” Julia answered, “but he’s sure to be 
back before Gray goes, Papa dear.” 

“Wonder what Gray’ll think of Peggy ?” 

“Why, Poodle?” 

“Hothing, only that monkey Sandra has him lashed to 
the mast.” 

"Papar 

Julia looked really vexed, and I hastened to say that, 
from what I had seen in America, impressionable young 
men simply lashed themselves to the Brat’s mast of charm 


212 Julia 

and wickedness. “She is a hussy, Julia,” I added, with 
the jocularity that so often hides the truth. 

Julia smiled, relieved. “Yes, isn’t she! Oh, here he 
comes with Eva—Reggy, I mean.” 

The young Duke was a straw-coloured youth with ex¬ 
tremely large and outstanding ears hut for which he would 
have been handsome. He had charming manners, and I 
liked him. Mrs. Cripps, I thought, seemed to have exag¬ 
gerated all her peculiarities both physical and mental. 
She seemed longer, more bony, more clumsy than before, 
and her booming drawl was distinctly more pronounced. 

“H’are you, Mr. McGray,” she said, taking my hand 
and grinding my fingers together, “how’s things in 
America ?” 

So happy was I to have got “home,” that I was glad 
that even she was there, for she too “belonged,” though 
she was—and always remained—extremely unattractive 
to me. 

Vine-Innes, when he joined us after a long ride some¬ 
where on business, struck me as looking worried and ill, 
and I wondered whether he had at last “got on” to Sandra 
and her ways. 

He was very civil to me but flung himself heavily into 
a chair and drank the whiskey-and-soda the footman 
brought him in a moody silence that no one seemed to 
notice, from which I gathered that they had grown used 
to what to me was a new development. 

“Tired, Humphy?” Mrs. Cripps drawled, and he 
nodded with a curtness that was to me surprising in him. 
“Infernally hot pounding along that endless road to Metr 
tingham—where’s Sandra 

“Gone in, dear.” 


Julia 


213 

Julia rose as she spoke. “I must go now to see Frances 
for a few minutes,” she said to me; “will you come with 
me, Gray ?” 

We crossed the lawn to the house, went through a cool 
long corridor and came out into the moat-garden on the 
far side where a little bridge led to the path that 
meandered up to the beech-wood. 

She had, I saw, never made up the weight she had lost 
during her illness before Sandra’s marriage, and the slim¬ 
ness gave her a grace and look of youth that delighted me. 

“You are looking very well, Julia,” I said as we stood 
for a moment on the bridge watching the pompous old 
carp in the green water. 

“My health is very good, Gray.” 

“Yes, but I didn’t mean that. I meant that you are 
—beautiful.” 

She blushed like a girl and her sweet eyes were shy. 

“Oh, nonsense! Come along, Mamma is expecting 

me. . . .” 

We talked very little as we made our slow way up to 
the wood, but I knew that she was as glad as I was that 
we were again together, and the silence was a good one. 
The old beech-trees grew at the top of the mild eminence, 
and just beyond their mottled shade we came to a little 
hollow in which, set in a big, gay garden, stood the cot¬ 
tage. It was a fairly large one, surrounded by a deep 
pillared loggia, but its nucleus, a tiny fifteenth-century 
three-roomed place that had been left intact, had a roof 
of weather-beaten thatch, and looked rather like a giant 
bee-hive. It was charmingly pretty, the house, and I 
wished it were mine, and said so. 

“Yes, it is nice, isn’t it? Poor Prances loves it, and 


Julia 


214 

Poodle is very keen on the garden. . . .” She stood still 
for a moment, her eyes vague. “Gray,” she went on 
slowly, “how queer life is. How odd that we never really 
believe that we are all going straight to our graves. Even 
Prances . . . who was so dreadfully ill, hardly ever 
seems to think of it. And in just a little while ... it 
will be over, and other people will live here, and look at 
poor Poodle’s sun-dial that he’s so proud of, and sit where 
he and Frances sit—and George Cravenarms and his 
family will be at King’s Camel, and Lilian will sleep 
in my bed, and feed my carp-” 

She broke off with a little laugh. “The carp have been 
there, they say, for ages. Perhaps they have been fed by 
dear old Dukie’s mother’s mother—it was her house, you 
know, and they always left it to a daughter.” 

What she had said was without originality, of course, 
but I valued it for I knew that she rarely voiced her 
intimate thoughts, and felt that her having done so to me 
meant that no threads had been broken by my absence. 

At the far side of the cottage, in the loggia, we found 
the Princess—spotted and ring-straked indeed, under her 
debutante garden hat, but unchanged in essential things— 
and Lady Ives, whom illness had curiously softened. 

The two old ladies greeted me cordially and when, a 
few minutes after, the Princess ran up the path to the 
beech-wood, Lady Ives said: “Julia, will you go and 
play that new thing of yours? I want to talk to Mr. 
McFadden.” 

Julia rose without a word, and went in, and Lady Ives 
began with all her old directness, “I’m glad you’ve come. 
There’s trouble ahead of them at King’s Camel.” 



Julia 


215 


My spirit sank. “Not . . . Julia ?” 

“Good Heavens, no l What trouble could she get into ? 
Not,” she added, “that it won’t hurt her too, if it’s allowed 
to go on. . . o” 

The sound of Dehussy’s Eille aux cheveux de lin came 
softly through the window and I wished Sandra in Tim- 
buctoo, or in Etna’s crater with Empedocles. Lady Ives’ 
face was a little crooked, her tongue seemed a trifle too big 
for her mouth, but her brain, I saw, was unimpaired, and 
her eyes as keen as ever. 

“It’s Sandra,” she began abruptly. “Sandra and 
Barton. She has turned out just as I always thought 
she would, and he is losing patience.” 

“What is she up to, Lady Ives ?” 

“That is what I don’t quite know, and what I want you 
to find out.” 

I groaned. “But—surely it is less my business than— 
say, Midwood’s or her father’s ?” 

“Nonsense! Barton is a mass of nerves—these big, 
strong-looking men so often are!—and as to Humphrey— 
well, I daresay that sharp eye of yours will soon see that, 
too. Barton doesn’t like King’s Camel for some reason, 
and never can stand it for more than a few days, so of 
course Madame Sandra chooses it for her happy hunting- 
ground.” 

“I quite understand that,” I returned, “and I agree 
with you that she’s a baggage. Only—whom could she 
be hunting down here % Who is there ?” 

“Ever go to Essingdean ?” 

“Never heard of it.” 

“Well, Essingdean Manor is the ugliest, dampest, most 


Julia 


216 

inconvenient house in England. Built in the ’sixties—the 
’sixties, Mr. McFadden!—in the place of an old house 
that was burnt down, by a man who made his money in 
fly-papers. And now it’s been taken for a year by a New 
York millionaire.” 

“It is just possible-” I began, when she shut me up 

with a look. 

“He is a man named Preston Gwynn, and she knew 
him at Aix that time when she was there with me. Norn 
then!” 

I vaguely remembered the man’s name, but that was 
all. 

“Is he in love with her ?” 

“He was then, and he is now, and what’s more she 
goes to his house to see him. She’s taken to riding again, 
you know.” 

“That sounds rather bad.” 

“The old woman’s face turned a dark brownish red. 

“It is bad. The worst of it, however, is this. She is 
not in love with him. He’s a decent enough man, though 
he does covet his neighbour’s wife, and ... I . . .” 
she hesitated. “I am told on very good authority that he 
has not— lam —seduced her—nor she him. He wants, it 
appears, to marry her. Fool!” 

Julia was now playing some of her old spinet music, 
and its simple, cool notes were an odd accompaniment to 
the old lady’s talk. 

“He was married that time at Aix, but now he is what 
they call free—his wife has married again—and—I know 
for a fact that he is trying to make her divorce Barton and 
marry him.” 

I did not ask her how she, practically bed-ridden, knew 



Julia 217 

so much of which the able-bodied members of the family 
seemed to be ignorant. 

“She couldn’t divorce Midwood, could she?” I asked, 
instead. 

“No. He has become a dull dog,” she answered, “and 
seems pretty sick of his bargain, as he may well be, but— 
so far as I know he never looks at a woman.” 

“Well, then?” 

“Yes, that’s just the point. Sandra is so tired of 
Barton—they have, she told Ambra, had some pretty seri¬ 
ous quarrels—that I believe she would, to get rid of him, 
do—almost anything. And Mr. Gwynn admires and be¬ 
lieves in her ” 

I was startled. “That must mean much to a woman 
whose husband no longer does” I agreed hastily, “but— 
you don’t mean that she would make an open scandal ?” 

Lady Ives drew her knitted shawl closer round her 
shoulders. 

“I mean that she has never been afraid to do anything 
she wanted to do. I dare not tell Humphrey what I know 
—he and I have never been friends. Poodle is utterly 
useless, and Ambra only laughs at me. So when they 
told me that you were coming, Mr. McFadden, I made 
up my mind to ask you to do what you could to stop it.” 

“What in Heaven’s name can I do ?” 

“You can do more than any one else, at all events. 
She is-” 

“Oh, please don’t say that she is ‘so fond of me,’ Lady 
Ives,” I burst out, “because she isn’t, really. She nearly 
bit my head off at Seal Harbour. I wish Midwood would 
take her to South America,” I added fractiously. 

Just then Julia called from the window to know 



218 Julia 

■whether she might come out, and shortly after we rose 
to go home. 

“You will think over what I’ve asked you, Mr. McFad- 
den,” the old lady said, as we shook hands, and I said that 
I would of course do what I could to be of use to her. 

Julia did not ask me to what I had referred, but our 
walk over the soft beech-mast and down the hill was very 
silent, and I knew that she must of course be wondering 
what Lady Ives could have asked me to do for her. As 
we crossed the bridge in the shadow of the house Vine- 
Innes came to the door. 

“Oh, there you are,” he said with the slight formality 
of manner he showed to every one, even his wife, “that 
is good. Barton has just come, and as he wanted to see 
Mr. Gwynn on some kind of business I rang up and asked 
him to dine. You don’t mind, of course, my dear ?” 

“I am glad,” she said, “I like Mr. Gwynn. Is Barton 
better ?” 

“He looks fairly all right,” Vine-Innes returned as we 
three walked up the flower-edged path, adding, to me, “He 
has been rather seedy since they came back.” 

“Malaria, I suppose? I believe there are some pretty 
poisonous swamps in his part of South America,” I re¬ 
turned mendaciously, glancing at Julia, who was tucking 
a sprig of forget-me-not into her gown. She was perfectly 
composed, and I remembered with relief that she had had 
a year and a half in which to get used to her position. 

Midwood, who looked older, and ill, was gladder to see 
me than I was to see him, for I unreasonably resented his 
wife’s upsetting presence in Julia’s house, but we were 
far apart at dinner, and after it he and Mr. Gwynn 


Julia 


219 

walked up and down the flagged path outside the draw- 
ing-rooom for nearly an hour while, a sudden mist hav¬ 
ing rolled up from the meadows, the rest of us sat just 
inside the drawing-room windows. 

“Barton does not look well, does he, Gray ?” 

At Julia’s question I started; it was so odd to hear her 
speak of him in such a commonplace way and in such a 
matter-of-fact voice. “No, he looks bad.” 

“He has had worries,” she went on, knitting placidly, 
“lost some money, I believe, and the doctor has forbidden 
him to go back to South America.” 

“Poor fellow,” I returned, “he must be upset.” 

Vine-Innes hid a yawn with his narrow hand. “Hard 
luck, isn’t it? Eva,” he went on, “do you feel inclined 
for a game of chess ?” 

She unfolded herself like a foot-measure, and lounged 
across the room. “Don’t mind, Humphy, only we will 
have it in your study, if you don’t mind—I can’t play 
when people are talking.” 

Julia, Sandra, the Duke, and I, were now alone, for 
the Prince and Princess were at the piano, trying over a 
batch of new songs. 

Sandra, who was in white, I remember, sat glowering 
at the trees outside, disregarding with open rudeness the 
young man attempting to talk with her. 

“Sandra,” Julia protested presently, “didn’t you hear 
what Peggy said to you ?” 

The girl jumped up. “Oh, all right, Peggy! Come 
and have a turn on the gramophone. . . .” 

They disappeared to their so-modem form of amuse¬ 
ment, the bed a deux, and Julia and I were alone. 


220 


Julia 


“Mr. Gwynn is very nice, Gray, don’t you think ?” she 
asked, and I nodded. “Yes, but what’s the good of his 
hanging round Sandra ?” 

She looked up at me, her eyes wide. “Why, Gray, what 
nonsense! He isn’t hanging round her at all.” 

“Oh! I imagined he was. . . 

And then suddenly, stung by a feeling of hatred of all 
the different secrecies I felt in the air there, where I had 
so idiotically expected to find peace, I leaned forward and 
laid my hand in hers. 

“Julia, let’s be real,” I said. “How are things?” 

She looked at me for a long moment and laid down her 
knitting. “You mean about me?” she asked quietly. 
“Why, exactly the same, of course.” 

“Ho better?” 

“Ho better—or yes, after all, I am better, because I’ve 
got used to it. Like having a hand gone you know. I 
have learned to do more with my other hand. Do you 
see ?” 

“Yes, dear. And he ?” 

“We have never,” she replied, with a little smile of 
extreme sweetness, “said one word to each other about it.” 

“Hever ?” 

“Ho. Of course it would have been very wrong if we 
had.” 

“But what do you think, Julia?” 

“Oh—it’s just the same; I wish he could get over it— 
almost , but not quite, I wish that. It is so hard on 
Sandra.” 

And I realised with a shock that this, of which I had 
never thought, was true; that it might easily be that the 
lack in him of real love, or even lasting passion, had had 


Julia 221 

a bad effect on his wife, who after all was even now not 
yet twenty-five. 

That she had loved him, if not deeply, at least with 
extreme violence, I knew, and that her love had died leav¬ 
ing her a prey to her worst faults—fickleness and easy 
emotionality—might he the result of his lack of sincere 
response, I now saw for the first time. 

“Are—is she not happy?” I asked, to see what Julia 
really knew. 

“No. But I think he is doing his best. Look, here 
they come! . . 

Midwood, who had a few minutes before left Gwynn, 
now came back across the grass, Sandra beside him, his 
arm across her shoulder. 

“What have you done with Reggy?” Julia asked. 

Sandra laughed. “Oh, he’s practising steps by his wild 
lone to the gramophone! . . .” 

The next hour was to me thoroughly unsatisfactory. 
Nothing seemed clear and clean-cut, no one seemed to be 
wholly his or her self, and as the sky grew overcast and 
dark with a coming storm I felt a psychical storm, as 
well, was on its way. 

Then some one asked the Prince to sing, and I wan¬ 
dered out into the garden by myself, to listen in peace to 
his beautiful voice. 

Crossing the drawbridge I turned to my right and sat 
down on a garden-seat under a tree. 

In front of me were three widely-opened windows, and 
the people within them looked oddly like actors seen from 
the front of the house. 

There was Julia, knitting and listening, a beautiful, 
serene woman whom no one would have suspected of any- 


Julia 


222 

thing in the nature of tragedy; Sandra and Gwynn side 
by side on a little sofa, just beyond her, looking as if they 
hardly knew each other, and at the next window the little 
glittering Princess, her face turned towards the, to me, 
invisible singer. 

The man’s voice was, I think, the sweetest I have ever 
heard, and he was singing some heady old love-song of 
Tosti’s. The very air seemed to throb with it, and I felt 
vaguely melting into a mood of the most abandoned senti¬ 
mentality. 

Then I heard a footstep on the bridge, and saw Mid¬ 
wood coming towards me. 

“Let’s move about,” he said shortly. “I’m all in.” 

We walked slowly past the windows, down the long 
walk that led to the servants’ quarters, and then over 
the “Kitchen-bridge” to the inner garden again. 

“I want to show you something, McFadden,” he said 
in a queer voice as we reached the far side of the house, 
“that is, I think I can show it to you.” 

He stood still and looked at me, his lower teeth show¬ 
ing in the light that came from an unshaded window. 
“What do you think of things, by the way?” he asked. 

“What things?” 

“Don’t fence.” 

“Well,” I returned slowly, “if you want a real answer, 
I must say that I should say things were in a pretty bad 
mess.” 

“Good! And so they are. And worse than you know, 
too. Listen.” He spoke so rapidly that I followed him 
with difficulty to the far-off accompaniment of Scarletta’s 
passionate voice. “Sandra and I,” he said, “hate each 
other. Gwynn wants her, and she wants Gwynn’s—adora- 


Julia 


223 


tion and his money (Hush!) Julia and I . . . that yon 
know. She seems to be nourished by her goodness—the 
satisfaction of her sense of duty, but I’m about done. 
Oh, I know—men don’t die of love, but—it can destroy 
them. I’m like a house gutted by fire. High-flown, eh, 
but it’s true. I’d let Sandra divorce me and be glad to— 
she’s asked me to do it—but Julia would hate it, so I 
won’t. By God, I won’t. I—I’m doing my best, McFad- 
den. Gwynn has a fancy—when he’s not gasping after 
Sandra—to have a look at the Amazon. He’s got a big 
yacht and wants to run— m —over to South America. 
We’ve been talking it over. He thinks Sandra’d go, but 
she shan’t. She shall stay here. Julia loves her.” 

“But . . 

“Oh!” he sneered. “Sandra’s affairs don’t last. Re¬ 
member that Frenchman—I forget his name, Toto some¬ 
thing—at Seal Harbour ? She got over him in a month— 
enviable nature.” 

“Don’t, Midwood. She’s your wife.” 

“She is—my messmate!” 

“After all, man-” I began, but he cut me short. 

“Oh, I know,” he cried impatiently—“I know what 
you want to say—that she gives me as much as I give 
her. That’s true, but, God Almighty, can I help that? 
And is my—my feeling for Julia a despicable thing like 
her neurasthenic passionettes ?” 

“Of course it isn’t, my dear fellow,” I persisted gently, 
“but Sandra is no fool. She must have known from 
the beginning of your married life that you didn’t love 
her. ...” 

“And before it, too. I lie, and play-act as well as I 
can to other people, McFadden, but I won’t with you. 



Julia 


224 

She knew perfectly well I didn’t want to marry her.” 

The clouds had gathered low over the house, and gusts 
of storm-wind shook the trees and curdled the water, in 
streaks. 

“Before I show what I spoke of,” Midwood went on, 
giving his collar a nervous tug, “I want to ask you a 
question. Do you believe that if, in some way, it became 
possible for Julia and me to marry, we should be happy?” 

“I most certainly believe that if you and she had met 
before she met Vine-Innes, and married in the ordinary 
way, that you would have been happy in the very highest 
sense.” 

“Thanks.” 

“But if,” I went on resolutely, “you are indulging in 
insane dreams of divorcing her daughter and murdering 
her husband, then—I can only say that you ought to be 
ashamed of yourself.” 

“Ah, I know a man who married his former—Christ, 
how absurd it sounds!—mother-in-law, and they are happy 
and—useful in the world.” 

“How did he dispose of his father-in-law?” I asked 
impatiently, for he annoyed me by thinking of such 
things in connection with Julia. 

“Oh, he married his typewriter!” 

“Vine-Innes hasn’t a typewriter. Look here, Mid¬ 
wood,” I went on, “don’t make me lose my temper. 
Heaven knows I’m sorry for you, but your nerves are 
in a fearful state, and you are really not quite normal. 
Remember that Julia is not one of the new-fashioned 
women. A promise is a promise to her, and if you and 
Sandra did divorce, she would never do anything to hurt 


Julia 225 

her husband, who has always been good to her, and who 
loves her in his own way.” 

A roll of thunder prevented my hearing his reply, but 
taking hold of my arm he led me round the corner of the 
house to a partly uncurtained window. “Look in there,” 
he said. 

I swear I did not mean to look, but before I could turn 
away I saw Mrs. Cripps and Yine-Innes leaning across 
the chess-table, gripping each other’s hands, and gazing 
into each other’s eyes, in a way that could mean only 
one thing. 


CHAPTER XIII 
C i ] 


I HAD never really liked Vine-Innes, for he was a thin- 
natured, meagre sort of man, but I had, I suppose, 
been influenced by Julia’s unfaltering opinion that he was 
a very good man, and kind to her. 

I had, though until that queer, stormy night I had 
never exactly known it, respected him. 

And to find that he had in his own house succumbed 
to the gross charms of Mrs. Cripps was a real shock to 
me. The abominable thing literally took my breath away, 
and for a moment I could not speak. 

“Well?” Midwood asked hoarsely. 

“I’m going in,” I returned, and did so, hurrying noise¬ 
lessly down the passage that led past the door of the 
study, and pausing in the hall to get my breath and com¬ 
pose my face. 

I wished I had not come to England. I hated Vine- 
Innes, and Mrs. Cripps, and Sandra, and I almost hated 
Midwood for his adding to my burdens of knowledge this 
thing that only Vine-Innes, Mrs. Cripps, and he had 
known. 

The Swedish butler, Oscar, found me standing there 
in the hall, and asked if I were not well. After he had 
gone I went into the chintz-room, and looked at myself 
in the glass. Yes, I looked as I felt, unhappy and ill. 

The rain had broken through the clouds now, and hissed 
against the windows, mingling with the high sweetness 
226 


Julia 227 

of Scarletta’s voice; I heard a window slam, then a door, 
and then the sound of quick footsteps. 

To my horror it was Vine-Innes, and he came, closing 
the door behind him, straight to me. 

“Mrs. Cripps,” he said without preamble, “says that 
you saw us through the window just now, McFadden.” 

“Yes, I did.” 

He looked distressed but not angry, and I must have 
looked angry but not distressed. 

“I must ask you to believe, Colonel Vine-Innes,” I went 
on, “that I had no idea of—of spying on you. I found 
myself by the window, and could not help one glance. I 
took no more.” 

“That I believe. May I ask what you intend to do?” 

“Do?” I rapped out. “Hold my tongue, of course.” 

“Thank you.” He hesitated for a moment and then 
began: “I need not tell you-” 

“Please do not tell me anything. I wish to Heaven I 
had not seen—and I shall try to forget it.” 

“Good. But”—his thin face with its too-small features, 
and its cold little eyes, had paled—“for—everybody’s sake 
I will ask you to remember one thing. I am not a light 
man. I have—I was absolutely faithful to—to my mar¬ 
riage vows, until now, and this experience is not an amus¬ 
ing one.” 

I could well believe it, for the poor devil looked 
miserable. 

“I will go now if you don’t mind,” I returned, and 
went, as quickly as I could over the slippery door, to the 
drawing-room. 

Julia still sat in her chair knitting quietly, the Prince 
and Princess were still at the piano, Sandra and Gwynn 



Julia 


228 

playing with Snowball, one of my Bulbul’s offspring, now 
a full-grown cat, and Poodle, who bad come in since I left 
the room, sat at a side-table playing Canfield. 

A glance at the clock told me that it was not twenty 
minutes since I bad gone out to that bench to listen to 
“Ninon.” It seemed hours, so utterly bad the situation 
changed. 

“Shall be sing just one more V 9 called out the Princess. 
“I don’t think you know this old thing”—she struck a 
chord or two and Julia, glancing quickly up, caught my 
eye. 

“ ‘Las, si j’avais pouvoir d’oublier,’ ” the old man sang, 
his hands in the armholes of his gay waistcoat, his big 
mouth square and red. 

Julia had stopped knitting, her eyes were on her hands, 
and her face was quite tranquil, though I noticed that it 
grew gradually a little sharper in outline. Her will-power 
was amazing. 

Then I felt something and looked towards the door, 
where, behind the singer, Midwood, his thick hair wet 
with rain, was standing. He had lost his head, and was 
gazing at her with all his misery and bitterness naked in 
his eyes. I think I actually prayed that she might not 
look up, but she did, in a slow, puzzled way as if she felt 
his gaze. For a moment her face quivered and I saw 
her splendid throat, still unblemished, stir a little. And 
then she let her eyes meet his, for, she told me after¬ 
wards, the first time since the night on the boat. 

No one noticed them. The room seemed to me to be 
charged with electricity; every one was suddenly plunged 
into an intensity of personal emotion that set each one on 


Julia 


229 


a kind of an island. There was no connection between 
Sandra and any one else but Gwynn, who sat gripping 
her hand on the sofa, the Princess was away with her 
Prince as she played the accompaniment to the song, 
Poodle Ives had laid down his little cards and was listen¬ 
ing as if enchanted, and, I knew, Vine-Innes must be back 
in the study, on 7m island. 

Only I was alone, and, because of it, clear-sighted 
enough to see across the straits and whirlpools that sur¬ 
rounded them all, and to realise, as I had never done be¬ 
fore, the helplessness of people, even strong ones, against 
that primary emotion that, in each other, is treated by 
nearly all of us so lightly. 

The ill-omened song came to an end, Julia took up her 
knitting, and Midwood, his handkerchief pressed to his 
forehead, joined me. 

“What a ripping song!” 

It was the young Duke who came in behind Midwood, 
and his cheery and absurd treble seemed to clear the air. 

“I say, Sandra,” he went on, “I’ve worked out some 
topping steps—want to try ’em?” 

“Ho, thanks. Preston is going to take me for a spin in 
the rain, I’ve a headache. Anybody want to come ?” 

She looked round with impertinent indifference, but no 
one spoke. 

“You look like the wrath of God, Barton,” she added, 
“why don’t you come ?” 

He frowned fiercely, and shook off her glance as if it 
were a touch. 

“Ho, no,” he cried, “let me alone, Sandra. I—I’m not 
well. . . 


Julia 


230 

She shrugged her shoulders. “You’re fearfully nervy. 
Better see a doctor, hadn’t you ? Shan’t he long, Mother. 
Night-night, Nonna and Nonno.” 

Gwynn, who looked embarrassed, shook hands with 
every one and said that he’d have her back in half an 
hour, but that he wouldn’t come in again. . . . 

Eive minutes later we heard his big car tearing down 
the drive. 

“You oughtn’t to let her do such mad things, Barton,” 
the Princess remarked. 

He did not answer, but sat brooding in his chair, a 
pitiful enough figure in the breakdown of his self-control, 
though I was the only one who seemed to notice it. 

Julia looked up. “There’s no harm in a little motor 
ride, Mamma,” she said with an effort, and Poodle, laying 
out his cards neatly, smiled his pleasant smile. 

“A nice fellow, Gwynn,” he said, “if we were living in 
my day—say in the ’eighties—I should think he was 
madly in love with Sandra, but boys and girls are different 
nowadays, aren’t they, my dear ?” 

The Princess, to whom he had appealed in the most 
matrimonial of voices, laughed. “Don’t be an idiot, 
Poodle,” she returned. 

Nothing more happened that evening, and I have never 
been able to remember whether Midwood stayed in the 
drawing-room till we all went upstairs, or whether he 
left before. 

My head ached, and was confused, and I lay awake a 
long time, not thinking, but victimised by a series of 
magic-lantem-like pictures, that flashed into my mind in 
a maddening way. I could not carry out any train of 
thought, one idea overlapped and cut short another, and 


Julia 231 

when at last I did fall asleep it was to be tortured by 
dreams. 


[ n ] 

It was no surprise, and a good deal of a relief to me, 
when I went downstairs at about ten the next morning, 
to be told by Sandra that Midwood had gone away. 

“He is as jumpy as a wild-cat, poor old thing, 1 ” she 
added, eating honey with a spoon. “I begged him to see 
a doctor, but of course he won’t.” 

We were alone in the breakfast-room, and I noticed 
that she had eaten nothing but half a piece of toast. 

“Aren’t up to much yourself, are you ?” I asked. 

“I’m all right,” she said indifferently, and then sud¬ 
denly, her eyes full of unamiable mockery, she added, 
“Were you shocked last night, Gray?” 

I had been shocked by her and Gwynn, by Mrs. Cripps 
and her father, and, in a different way, by her husband, 
but I said no, and looked stupid. 

“Oh, rot!” she snapped, her brows bent wrathfully. 
“Don’t pretend to be blind. You saw. I knew that at 
once.” 

I could not say much, for I did not know to which of 
the three things she was referring. “I see, I suppose, as 
much and no more than my neighbours,” I growled. 
“Where is your mother ?” 

“Oh, she had her Victorian meal at the head of my 
father’s table, an hour and a half ago. She’s probably 
‘interviewing’ Cook at present.” 

I left her paddling the spoon in the honey, and found 
Julia saying good-bye to the Duke at the door. He looked 


232 


Julia 


very cheery, his large, thin ears shining like currant 
jelly in the sun, and I envied him because he was going 
away. 

When the car had crossed the bridge Julia and I went 
out into the moat-garden, and she put on her gardening 
gloves and kneeling on a wooden box began to dig with 
a trowel. She was transplanting some little blue flowers 
from pots into the earth, directly under Vine-Innes’s 
window. 

“I wish,” she said after a while, “that you’d talk to poor 
Barton, Gray.” 

“But he’s gone !” 

“Only for a few days, dear. He—really ought to see 
a doctor, he is—ill.” I watched her fine, biscuit-coloured 
hand at its work, for a moment. 

“He ought,” I said then, “to go away for good. He 
ought to take Sandra,v and if he can’t go to South America 
—well, there’s India, or Horth America-” 

“She won’t go.” 

" Won’t r 

“Ho. You know her. She has made up her mind to 
stay here all summer and—why, Gray, I’ve begged her 
to go!” 

“Julia,” I cried, “you are a deceitful creature! How 
can you be so calm, and look so—normal—and feel as 
you do ?” 

She turned, and, still kneeling, looked up at me, all 
her pitiful composure gone, her noble face white and 
ravaged. 

“I—I have done my best, Gray,” she said, and then her 
eyes filled with the slow tears of long agony. 

“But—if they did go, dear ? I believe he could make 



Julia 233 

her go. . . . And if you knew you need not see him for 
years V ’ 

She felt for her pocket-handkerchief, could not find it, 
and then wiped her eyes on her sleeve like a child. “I 
have,” was her reply, “one dread, Gray. That—Hum¬ 
phrey may see some day. He—Barton—well, you saw 
last night. It seems to me that poor Humphrey must 
notice sometime, and he would he so unhappy.” 

“Would he, Julia?” I returned, glancing at the closed 
window of the study. 

“Of course! Oh, I know,” she went on, still kneeling, 
“that you have never liked him much—he’s too cold in 
his manner, too reserved, to please you, but he is a good 
and honourable man, and it would hurt him horribly to 
know that I had not been as faithful to him as he has 
to me.” 

“Nonsense! Not faithful, indeed, Julia. You!" My 
laugh sounded harsh and almost indignant, and she 
smiled. 

“Oh, you think I am good because you know what I 
have . . . how hard it has been, Gray, but if he knew— 
Humphrey, I mean—that I had never loved him, never, 
that I have loved, always , Sandra’s husband—he would 
never get over it.” 

Her beautiful trust was in a way its own reward, and 
I knew what Midwood must have felt, what a mixture of 
fury against Vine-Innes and shameful, sub-conscious hope 
for himself, when he had made the discovery of Vine- 
Innes’s treachery. 

“I almost wish,” I said after a pause, watching her 
closely as she knocked the superfluity of pot-mould off one 
of her plantlings, “that Vine-Innes was not . . . what 


234 


Julia 


you say. If lie were not so impeccable, and Sandra did 
finally get the divorce that’s such child’s play to get 
nowadays ...” 

I was ashamed of myself for suggesting it, but every¬ 
thing was already in such a hopeless tangle that it seemed 
to matter very little what I, or any one else, merely said. 

“Gray,” she cried, rising as easily as. if she had been 
twenty, “what an abominable thing to say! I am ashamed 
of you! I have had to suffer, I have missed many things, 
but I have had the comfort of being able to respect and 
admire my husband, and that is much, and if—if I hadn’t 
that—I don’t think I could have borne things.” 

I apologised and she forgave me, but I knew that I had 
not only hurt but bewildered her. It did not occur to me 
until later that she had not seemed to notice what I had 
about the possibility of Sandra and Midwood obtaining 
a divorce. 

For two or three days she seemed a little afraid of me, 
which hurt me, but gradually she returned to her ordinary 
manner and, Mrs. Cripps having left, after the receipt of 
a telegram, whose origin I suspected, the day after my 
discovery, things settled down into their usual pleasant 
monotony, except that Sandra caught cold and stayed in 
her room, to Julia’s distress, for forty-eight hours. On 
the sixth day Midwood came back. 

[ in ] 

I was writing letters in my room after lunch when a 
knock startled me, and he followed it. 

He had on new clothes, and looked very much better 
than he had done that unpleasant night, but I noticed 


Julia 


235 

that his hands were still restless, and his eyes sunken. 

“Oh yes, thanks,” he answered my conventional ques¬ 
tions, “I am better. I saw a nerve-man, an old friend of 
mine; he gave me some stuff to make me sleep, and I ? ve 
had massage, and a Turkish-bath—the usual material 
remedies for an immaterial ailment, but no doubt better 
than nothing. And I’ve something to tell you. I’m 
ashamed of what I did that night, McFadden. God knows 
what made me do it, for I’m not really a cad; and I hope 
it was chiefly because I was so rottenly ill I hardly real¬ 
ised what a dirty trick it was.” 

“Don’t say any more, Midwood.” 

“Bight. Secondly, I saw Gwynn in town. He came 
to see me at Arthur’s, and—well, he’s not at all a bad 
chap. Said he, too, was ashamed of what he’d been doing 
—making love to my wife in her father’s house, and so 
on—and asked me straight out—as it was plain Sandra 
and I weren’t suited to each other, and life being short 
and divorce easy—if I wouldn’t make her and him happy 
and—get peace for myself into the bargain.” 

“By Jove!” 

“Yes, these days are pretty— modern, hey ?” 

“They are. What’d you say?” 

“What could I say, except that I was very fond of my 
wife and had no wish to lose her ?” 

“Which isn’t true, Midwood.” 

“Oh, hell, of course it isn’t, but —she would hate it, a 
divorce, I mean.” 

I was surprised and said so. “Are you sure, Midwood ? 
Because I am not. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if it 
would be a relief to her—you taking all the blame, of 


course. 


Julia 


236 

“What an odd fellow you are,” he returned, “not to 
know her better than that. Why—she hates divorces. 
Thinks them wicked—all except the Princess’s, of course, 
and that detestable Eva’s, and even that was an awful 
blow—but,” his face softened to a look of great tender¬ 
ness as he ended in a different voice, “her own daughter — 
it would break her heart!” 

“Oh, you were thinking of Julia?” I gasped, and he 
burst out laughing. 

“You didn’t think I was thinking about Sandra!” 

“Naturally I did. Don’t laugh in that way.” 

“Sorry—Gray—mayn’t I”—he added, holding out his 
hand—“call you Gray ?” 

“Call me whatever you like. Yes, of course call me 
Gray. And I beg your pardon for being peevish, but— 
King’s Camel is not exactly the place for a rest-cure these 
days.” 

Presently we went back to the subject of the divorce. 

“If I were free, you see,” he began quietly, “she need 
never see me again. Oh,” in answer to a look of mine, “I 
know this isn’t what I said the other night, but you said 
yourself that I wasn’t quite normal, and I wasn’t. I was 
also,” he added quietly, “pretty full of brandy.” 

“Good God!” 

“Oh, I don’t do it often. I—I had only just found 
out about Eva and Vine-Innes, and—it bowled me over. 
I am all right now, and I Icnow there’s no hope for Julia 
and me, in this world. By the way, McEadden—Gray— 
do you believe in God ?” 

“I do.” 

“Well—so do I. To go back to Gwynn. He’s a deter- 


Julia 


237 

mined beggar, and I believe he could manage poor little 
Sandra, because be—be loves ber. He isn’t under many 
delusions about ber, either. And—do you know, I very 
nearly killed myself yesterday, not at all in tbe mood I 
was tbe other night, but because it seemed tbe only way 
to make Julia happy.” 

“Happy!” 

“In tbe long run, yes. She would, of course, have 
thought it a mere accident. You see, if I were out of tbe 
way Gwynn would be tbe making of Sandra, and Sandra 
is Julia’s child. She doesn’t know ber as you and I do. 
Then secondly, if Julia did not have to see me she would 
gradually forget me. People do. This business of our 
meeting is unbearable.” 

“Nothing is unbearable,” I answered, “for Julia, but 
she bates morbidity, and suicide is tbe apotheosis of mor¬ 
bidity, Barton.” 

“Not if it’s done deliberately, for tbe benefit of two 
other people. Think of tbe Japanese. Can’t call them 
morbid!” 

“No, but their ethics don’t do for white men any more 
than does their raw fish and seaweed food. I’ll tell you 
what I think, Midwood. If you like, I’ll ask Sandra if 
she’d like you to free her, and if she says yes I—I’ll sound 
Julia. Sandra’s happiness and welfare would weigh 
pretty heavily with her against the horror of divorce.” 

He jumped up like a boy, and wrung my hand. 

“God bless you for that, you best of friends,” he cried. 
“If you can persuade her to let me do it, I give you my 
word I’ll go back to my vile river, as Sandra calls it, and 
never see Julia again so long as I live.” 


238 


Julia 


He left me alone then, and after tea I took Sandra into 
the summer garden, now a giant rose-bowl of a place, and 
asked her point-blank if she was in love with Gwynn. 

“If I say yes you’ll revile me, and if I say no you won’t 
believe me,” she replied, “so I’ll say nothing at all.” 

“My dear child, do trust me. You and Midwood are 
not happy, and you, at least, are young. Gwynn’s state 
of mind is plain.” 

“Barton won’t do it, I—I’ve asked him.” 

“Yes, hut not in connection with Gwynn.” 

She caught my arm. “Oh, Gray, dear kind man—will 
he? Would he? Do you think you could make him?” 
she cried, her eyes like two lakes. “I am so tired of him. 
It was all wrong from the beginning. He never cared for 
me. I don’t believe he could care for a woman, and I 
have been so unhappy. . . 

I left her gathering roses, and singing to herself one 
of her step-grandfather’s songs. Hever, since the early 
days in Rome before poor Lensky appeared, had I seen 
her so simple and childlike, and—-yes-—almost sweet. 

Julia was playing the spinet as I approached the house, 
and I went in by the window. 

I began with care, and had nearly reached the point, 
when to my surprise she saw through me and rose, her 
right hand still on the keys. “Gray,” she said seriously, 
“you are not going to suggest that Sandra should get a 
divorce V* 

“Yes, I am, Julia, I am convinced that it is the only 
way for them.” 

“Never, Gray! I know that things are a little hard for 
them now, but—they will come right in the end.” 

“With death, yes.” 


Julia 


239 


“No, no. It is my fault that she is spoilt. I know it, 
but—oh, Gray, she was such a sweet baby, and I love her 
so! And she is only a little foolish now, and it is partly 
his doing. USTo, if I have no influence with her,” she added 
resolutely, “I will beg him to refuse a divorce. I do not 
believe in it, even—even in cases of—well, like Eva. I 
think it would have been better if her husband had given 
her another chance, and when it’s only just that they are 
not perfectly happy, I think it is wrong.” 

“No, Julia. They drive each other mad; they are ruin¬ 
ing each other’s tempers; neither of them can develop as 
every human is meant to develop until he or she dies, so 
long as they are tied up in this way.” 

“What,” she asked me, as if she were really puzzled, 
“would Auntie Martha have said to you, Gray ?” 

I argued with her for over an hour, and quite in vain. 
Even when I told her finally that Sandra wanted to marry 
Preston Gwynn she was, though shocked and frightened, 
as immovable as a block of marble. 

“It is most wicked of her,” she cried, pale and worn- 
looking, “and of Mr. Gwynn. I will tell him that he 
must go away. And Barton must,” she added, “take her 
away. He married her, and he must stand by and help 
her through this folly.” 

I had never heard her speak with such indignation, and 
I got up. 

“It’s no good, Sandra,” I told the girl abruptly, for I 
was worn out, “she won’t hear of it.” 

Her face darkened. “Oh, won't she! We shall see, 
Gray. After all,” she added, deliberately flippant, “it’s 
my funeral and not hers. Where is Barton, do you 
know ?” 


240 


Julia 


“Yes. He’s in your sitting-room.” 

“Then good-bye.” Half-way across the lawn she came 
back, holding out her hand. “Pm sorry I was so disagree¬ 
able, Grigetto. You have been a dear.” 


[ ™ ] 

The next morning the storm burst. After Julia, Mid¬ 
wood, and Sandra had talked for an hour in the billiard- 
room, Sandra burst into the chintz-room and dragged me 
back to them. 

“How then, Barton,” she cried furiously, “repeat to 
Gray McFadden what you have been saying to me.” 

“Fve said,” he answered, “that as Julia doesn’t want 
it, there shall be no divorce.” 

“Doesn’t matter what I want,” the girl retorted, almost 
in a shriek, and he shrugged his shoulders. 

“That Mother is old-fashioned and narrow-minded is 
to be allowed to ruin my life. That's fair-play, Gray, 
isn’t it?” 

“You did marry Barton, though, only a year and a half 
ago,” I reminded her gently. 

“Yes, and he married me, and a devoted husband he 
has been!” 

“I have been absolutely faithful to you, Sandra,” he 
said, his voice stern. 

“Faithful, yes, I haven’t a doubt of it, but it wasn’t 
to me. . . 

My heart stood still, but she hurried on. 

“You were faithful to some idiotic idea—or some ideal. 
A lot it had to do with me!" 


Julia 241 

He bowed gravely, bis eyes on the ground. “That,” 
be said, “is true.” 

“There, you bear? You bear, Mother? A useful kind 
of faithfulness, that be admits bad nothing to do with me, 
bis wife!” 

“Listen, Sandra,” I urged. “You can’t have it both 
ways. You call yourself bis wife, well—be a wife. I 
personally am sorry the divorce can’t be arranged.” 

“You think Mother’s wrong, then?” she cried, and I 
owned that I did. 

“Yes. But as Midwood has decided to do as she . . . 
advises—what’s the use of making a fuss ? He’ll take you 
away—to Aix—or wherever you like, and you can amuse 
yourself. We all know that you need amusement, because 
you are young, my dear.” 

But she brushed me aside angrily. “Oh, be quiet, 
Gray! I tell you I don’t want to be taken about like 
a child to parties by a bored grown-up. I want to be 
with people who are not so damned superior as you, 
Mother, and Barton—yes, and even you, Gray.” 

I have never seen a face so grieved as Julia’s was as 
she listened to this outburst, which went on, at intervals, 
for quite half an hour, and once or twice I thought it 
was convincing her of the impossibility of any effectual 
reconciliation, but under her shocked misery her granite 
resolution held good. 

“It is, as you say, for you and your husband to decide, 
Sandra,” she said at last, rising and going to the door, 
“but Barton has asked to know my wish, and it is this: 
That you and he, who married each other of your own 
free wills, should keep the promises you made on your 


242 


Julia 

wedding-day and—make the best of things. After all,” 
she added with a faint smile, “that is what every one has 
to do, in one way or another.” 

Then she went out, and I, shortly afterwards, went up 
to my room. That she was wrong I believed; that she 
was true to her own convictions I knew, and I also knew 
that she need say no more. Midwood would carry out her 
wishes at no matter what cost to Sandra and himself. 
Vine-Innes, whose absence Sandra had waited for before 
making her supreme attack, came home before dinner, 
and I knew by his face as we sat down, that he had been 
told by Julia of what had taken place. 

The meal was constrained and rather silent, for the 
Prince and Princess were dining at the cottage, and im¬ 
mediately after it Vine-Innes and Julia disappeared with 
Sandra, and Midwood and I sat and smoked in the garden 
in almost unbroken silence. 

Once he said, “Well—I’m done,” and I nodded, adding 
that he had certainly done his best, and once he told me, 
in answer to a question, that he would suggest St. Moritz 
or Deauville to Sandra. 

“It is hard on her,” he added, and I agreed silently. 

At ten Julia sent me a note saying that she and Sandra 
were both too tired to come downstairs again, and adding 
that Vine-Innes had been “very kind and good.” 

The writing was unequal and blotted, and when Mid¬ 
wood had read it he put it into his pocket, and we sepa¬ 
rated. 


CHAPTER XIV 
[ i ] 


y | ^ HE next morning Ives came to my room, as lie had 
agreed, with the half-finished MS. of his hook, 
“Sunny Days,” and for two hours we went over it to¬ 
gether, he believing that my experience as a novelist 
would enable me to criticise and help him with it. 

It was a charming, naive chronicle, rambling, indis¬ 
creet, and kindly, well worthy the success it was to have 
six months later, and I did nothing to it except suggest 
that the dear little man should cut out one or two split 
infinitives, and “hims” and “hers,” when “he” and “she” 
was plainly meant. 

He was a great believer in the disguising property of 
initials, to, and I had to impress on him very firmly that 
the sons and daughters of the Spanish Marquess “R” 
(whose absurd blunder in Berlin in ’83 had nearly got 
him recalled by his government) would pretty certainly 
not consider the mere initial a disguise sufficiently im¬ 
penetrable to serve their father’s memory and their own 
vanity. 

“Every one, too, my dear Poodle,” I said again, “knows 
the first half of the story about Lady Wrotham’s pyjamas, 
and what you say about ‘Graf L.’s’ valet dovetails into it 
so neatly that there can be no doubt as to the two stories 
being the halves of a pretty brilliant whole.” 

“Ah, but Grigetto,” he pleaded, “it is so funny! Do 
let me leave it in.” 


243 


244 Julia 

“Not unless you want to get yourself and everybody 
else into tbe most awful hot water.” 

The trouble was that Poodle Ives himself had never in 
his life seen through the flimsiest biographical disguise, 
and I had hard work to persuade him that there were 
people who did. Then, too, there was his outrageous 
sense of humour to be contended with, and his subcon¬ 
scious but ingrown conviction that things over were things 
forgotten. 

I had two hours’ most amusing reading and talk, and 
finally he skipped away, his beautiful new despatch-box 
under his arm, as happy as a child that I, “a celebrated 
author,” had enjoyed his book. 

When he had gone, I finished dressing and went down¬ 
stairs to see Julia and Sandra, before starting off to the 
Lavingtons, where I was to lunch and inspect the heir. 

I had slept badly, and dreaded a renewal of the storms 
of the day before, but all was quiet. 

Julia was in the hall, arranging flowers at the old oak 
table, and she told me that Humphrey, who had been very 
kind to her and quite agreed that Sandra and Barton 
must “begin over again,” had gone to Mettingham on 
business, and that Sandra was still asleep. “She pinned 
a note on her door, telling Marie not to bring her break¬ 
fast till she rang, and I fear she has one of her bad head¬ 
aches, for the blinds are still down.” 

She sighed. “Poor Sandra, she will be very angry with 
me for days, Grigetto—she won’t speak to me, or even 
look at me, and I’m such a —goose that it hurts horribly.” 

“She has no right to hurt you so.” 

“Ah well, she’s very young and she does so like having 
her own way!” 


Julia 


245 


“Have yon seen Midwood, Julia?” 

“Ho. He had gone out when I came down. Oscar says 
he didn’t wait for breakfast.” 

“Off for one of his long walks, I suppose.” 

I sat down and watched her at her pretty task. She 
was paler than I had ever seen her, and her eyes were 
heavy and dull, but her pale lips—she had never painted 
them or her cheeks, I knew, since those few days in Rome 
—were set in sweet, firm curves, and she seemed calm. 

“You have not slept, dear Gray,” she said presently, 
“and you are very tired. Shan’t I ring up Amy and say 
you’ll come to-morrow instead ? She and Godfrey won’t 
mind.” 

“Ho, no, I am quite well, and the drive,” I added 
untruthfully, “will do me good.” 

I told her about the MS., and she smiled, pleased and 
proud that dear Poodle’s work should meet with such 
high approval. 

Being a large frog in a small pool is not without its 
advantages, and the Ives-Vines-Innes tribe being that 
nowadays exceptional thing, an authorless family, I think 
that they were all quite sincere in their simply-expressed 
admiration for my small talent. 

Ives, by the way, scored not only a quite widespread 
success with his book, as I have said, but made a decent 
sum of money by it. It is easy and delightful reading, 
and indeed the dear little man, like the sun-dial, recorded 
only sunny days, for the ones that were not sunny he had 
all his life speedily forgotten. 

“Gray,” Julia asked me, as she set a big bowl of roses 
under my nose, “you do agree with me, now that you’ve 
thought it over, and in your heart of hearts, don’t you ?” 


Julia 


246 

“I do not, dear. I think that in this particular case 
divorce is the only cure. And remember, I saw them last 
year in America, when they hadn’t been married a year, 
and I thought then that they couldn’t go on with it.” 

“You never wrote me, Gray.” 

“ ‘How like a woman!’ as the saying has it, Julia. Of 
course I didn’t write you about it. It was no business of 
mine, and you couldn’t have helped, and then they went 
back to Rio a couple of months later, and you and the 
Princess wrote me that they were well and having a good 
time.” 

“I didn’t write you an opinion. I wrote you, once, 
that Sandra had written me that they were all right.” 

“Same thing, to me, off there in California, dear. But, 
in any case, it wasn’t for me to interfere, as Madame 
Sandra quite clearly gave me to understand, at Seal 
Harbour!” 

She sighed. “I wish I were a Roman Catholic, Gray. 
It must be such a comfort to make ‘novena,’ and burn 
candles.” 

“It is, dear Julia, I am sure. But then you aren't 
one.” 

The sunlight poured in through the splendid ruby and 
sapphire and topaz of the old windows, jewelling the floor 
and the wall, paling the flowers in the bowls and vases; 
through the open door I saw some big lilac-coloured 
pigeons waddling about on the flagstones, and beyond, 
through the arch, my eyes could cross the drawbridge, and 
go over the greenness of the great lawn as it swept grad¬ 
ually up to the row of oaks that bordered that side of the 
property. 

“It is a wonderful thing for you to have this lovely 


Julia 247 

place to live in, Julia,” I murmured, saturated with its 
beauty and peace. 

“Yes, it is wonderful. . . 

I got up suddenly. “I think Til go now, dear. The 
car is there and Mrs. Lavington asked me to come early 
and watch the tennis. . . 

“Yes, Gray. . . ” 

But Midwood’s legs were long and he was a swift 
walker. Before I had got my coat and hat he was march¬ 
ing over the flagstones in a whirr of scattered pigeons. 

“Julia,” he said as he reached the door, where his head 
touched the ivy-leaves, “I’ve come to tell you that you 
need not worry. Everything is going to be all right. 
Morning, Gray.” 

“Good morning, Barton.” 

Julia laid down her roses and looked, as I did, at his 
face. 

The troubled, confused misery had gone out of it, tak¬ 
ing away the blackness of the lines, smoothing his fore¬ 
head, clearing his eyes. He looked rather splendid, and, 
standing there, he smiled. 

“You are,” he said, “right. Sandra and I must fight 
our way through this—dirty weather—and we will. I 
have been wrong throughout. I have always been inclined 
to self-pity, and—I’ve been very sorry for myself for—a 
long time. How I have come to see that I must pity her ” 

“Oh!” Julia’s word was half a sigh, and she sat down. 

“Yes, I’m a weak man in some ways, but I am strong 
in others, and—I am going as children say, ‘to try to be 
good.’ I’m going to try to make that—that poor little 
thing happy.” 

There was, in effect, in his face and manner something 


248 Julia 

of the eagerness of the repentant child, and also, it touched 
me to see, something of the child’s wish for praise for 
what is still unaccomplished. That the man had suffered 
abominably, I knew; I knew that he was hound to suffer 
more, hut I saw that for the moment he had come to a 
merciful rest in an oasis, and I hastened to add my palm- 
tree to it. 

“Good, Midwood,” I cried. “I thought you would do 
it. Now Julia will he happy.” 

And Julia, her kind eyes shining, held out her hands 
to him. 

He told me afterwards—hut I had instinctively known 
—that hut for unavoidable greetings and farewells, in the 
presence of other people, it was the first time since they 
parted at Dover that he had touched her hands. 

Now he kissed them quietly and let them go at once. 

“Is—she awake?” he asked. 

“No, hut it’s nearly twelve.” 

“I’ll let her sleep. Are you off to your lunch-party, 
Gray?” 

I nodded. 

“Right. I’ll walk to the car with you, if you like.” 

Crossing the courtyard slowly and in silence, we reached 
the drawbridge beyond which, owing to some work being 
done to the bridge, the car waited. The hammering of 
the workmen sounded cheerier than it had done from my 
room, the sky looked bluer than it had from my window. 

“McFadden,” Midwood said, stopping me at a safe di&* 
tance from the chauffeur, “I’m going to have a damned . 
hard try.” 

“And you’ll succeed.” I hesitated an instant, hut went 
on: “Sandra is a queer mixture, but she does love Julia— 


Julia 


249 


more than either of them know, perhaps, for there are 
barriers of temperament between ’em—and—she loves 
children. She described Amy Lavington’s baby to me in 
a very sweet and rather pathetic way.” 

He bit his lip. “Poor girl! Well, Gray, I am going 
to own up that everything has been my fault. It’s not 
quite true, but when she has trampled me enough, she 
will set to work to console me. At least,” he added, break¬ 
ing off, “most women are that way.” 

I wondered. 

“And then,” he resumed briskly, “I’ll ask her where 
she wants to go, and, wherever it is, I’ll take her.” 

“Good. And if I may suggest something—try to amuse 
yourself as well as her. It is no compliment for a woman 
to have her husband going about with her looking like a 
crucified grizzly!” 

We both burst into rather nervous laughter and, after 
shaking hands with him, I got into the car and was 
borne down the avenue, leaving him standing in the 
sun. 


[ ii ] 

The Lavingtons’ house was delightful, they were de¬ 
lightful, the son was delightful. The two other guests, a 
sister of Godfrey’s and a cousin of Amy’s, were young, 
good-looking, and gay. I thoroughly enjoyed my lunch, 
too, and altogether had a very good time. 

But I went on to the garden-party only out of polite¬ 
ness. Garden-parties do not fit into my scheme of life, 
and I always dread walking about more than is necessary. 

However, Amy wanted me to go, so I went, said, and 


Julia 


250 

did the usual things, and at about six Amy and I escaped, 
leaving the others behind. 

“I won’t go in,” I said, seeing Julia’s car drawn up 
at the door in readiness for me, but Amy had forgotten to 
remind me to autograph the cousin’s copy of my last book, 
so we went back to the pretty drawing-room, and the book 
was produced. 

As I went through the awkward task of signing my 
name in a book I had not given to its owner, the butler 
came in. 

“Mrs. Vine-Innes is on the ’phone, sir,” he said. “It is 
the third time she has rung up.” 

“Yes, yes, Julia, it’s I, Gray,” I bawled, a minute 
later. The thing bubbled, and hissed, and crackled, and 
I was about to roar again when her voice came perfectly 
distinct. 

“Gray—will you please come home ?” she said. “Hum¬ 
phrey went to London from Mettingham, and I need 
you.” 

“I’m just leaving. We went to a garden-party at Mrs. 
Poole-Hendry’s and are just back. Nothing wrong, is 
there, dear?” 

“Yes, Gray. Sandra has run away with Mr. Gwynn.” 

It was a bad moment. 

I explained to Amy that I was wanted, and after ex¬ 
pressing regrets at not having time to see the baby in his 
bath, said good-bye and left. 

[ ui ] 

As the car went through the King’s Camel gates it 
slowed up, and I saw Julia come towards us, across the 


Julia 251 

lawn. She had a big hunch of flowers in her hand, and 
carried a crimson parasol. 

“Do come and walk up with me, Gray,” she called, wav¬ 
ing her flowers. 

I got ont, more than amazed, but as the car went on 
she dropped her incredible manner. 

“No one knows yet,” she said hastily, “only Barton 
and me. Thank God Marie is in bed with an ulcerated 
tooth, and sent one of the maids to tell her—Sandra. 
This maid read Sandra’s note on the door and came to 
Fountain-” 

“Yes, yes, Julia, but tell me from the beginning.” 

“That is the beginning. The Vicar and Mrs. Pawling 
came just after you left, and I took them over to see 
Prances, and then Prances wanted me to stay to lunch and 
I did. I rang up the house to tell them not to expect 
me, and Oscar gave me Humphrey’s message about having 
to go to London to see Mr. Tucker—his solicitor, you 
know—and I didn’t come home till about three. When 
Oscar told me that Sandra had not rung for lunch I—went 
up. And she wasn’t there.” 

“Yes, dear,” I answered, making her sit down on a 
fallen tree she was very fond of, “but why do you think 
it’s Gwynn?” 

She took a letter from her pocket and handed it to me. 

“Dear Mother” (it said), 

“By the time you read this Preston Gwynn and I will 
be at Dover on our way to Paris. I went over to him in 
the night and told him of the way you have decided about 
my life, and we both refuse to accept your decision. 

“I cannot and will not endure being miserable any 



252 


Julia 


longer, and I will never forgive you for preventing 
Barton, when once Gray had persuaded him to free me, 
from doing it Barton’s first wife’s mother did every¬ 
thing for her when she no longer loved Barton. But then 
she’s modern. 

“I don’t want to hurt you unnecessarily, so I’d better 
stop. Barton can find us at Meurice’s, and I hope that 
now it’s done, even you will not interfere any more. 

“Sandba.” 

It was pretty brutal, but Julia did not seem to have 
noticed that side of it. 

She sat there huddled together, her figure looking thick¬ 
ened and old, as if her muscles had given way, and all she 
said was, “Oh, the poor child, the poor child!” 

“Yes, it is very sad,” I answered, “but it may after all 
be for the best, Julia. But for this business Gwynn is 
a good fellow, and as Barton said, he is strong, and will 
rule her. He loves her, too. Where is Barton, by the 
way ?” 

“Gone to Mettingham to telegraph, I think. . . . I—I 
don’t really know, Gray. . . 

Her vagueness and her lack of initiative alarmed me. 

“What have you told the servants V 9 

“Oh, Barton said that she’d gone to town—that he had 
taken her to the station in the two-seater. Luckily he did 
go somewhere while they were having their lunch—the 
servants, I mean. You know she might have joined us on 
the lawn. ...” 

It was then well after six, and of course I realised that 
the fiction could not be kept up for long. 

“Have you got on to Vine-Innes?” I asked her. 


Julia 253 

“No. I got Mr. Tucker, but Humphrey hadn’t yet 
been. . . .” 

A thought of the abominable Eva flashed through my 
mind, and I paused for a moment before saying: “When 
will he he hack ?” 

“I don’t know, Gray. He lost a stopping out of a tooth 
yesterday, and I suppose will go to see Mr. Jackson.” 

“Then you must wire to his club.” 

“Barton did. Oh, Gray-” 

She did not cry, and the devastation of her face was 
such that I wished to Heaven tears could come to soften it. 

“Isn’t there,” I burst out, “something, anything I can 
do, Julia?” 

“Ho. You can’t,” she said slowly, “get her back, and 
that’s the only thing that could help.” 

“But Barton—he wouldn’t take her back!” 

“Yes, he would,” she answered wearily, “he would. I 
asked him.” 

I reflected that Midwood must be either a saint or a 
lunatic, then I understood that the poor wretch had, lit¬ 
erally, given his life to Julia, as he would indubitably 
have given it for her. 

Such things were beyond me, and though his nervous 
collapse of the other night, his outburst to me at Seal 
Harbour, and his incontestable bitterness towards Sandra, 
were anything but saintly, and impossible to reconcile 
with his attitude to Julia, I could only accept him as he 
was and, on the whole, admire him. 

“Oh,” Julia said suddenly, rousing herself from her 
miserable stupor, “here is his note—sent over by a groom 
two or three hours after they left.” 

Gwynn’s writing was good, and so was his language. 



254 


Julia 


He simply stated that he hoped, considering that the step 
Sandra and he were taking had been forced on them by 
Julia, she would do nothing to impede the only course 
left to Midwood. “I love Sandra,” he ended, “I have 
loved her ever since we met at Aix, and I am going to 
make her happy.” 

“Perhaps he can, dear,” I commented. 

“That man ! 33 she cried in the only scorn I had ever 
heard her express, “that man, after Barton!” 

Then, slowly, her mind began to work and I, knowing 
her well, was able to help her grope forward until she at 
last reached the light. 

“Gray,” she cried, when I had made her take a swallow 
of brandy from the tiny flask she had sent me for Christ¬ 
mas fifteen years before, “after all, it may not be too 
late!” 

“Por what?” 

“To get her back. Back here, before any one knows!” 

“But my dearest girl, she wouldn’t come.” 

“Hot if I wrote or telegraphed, but—oh Gray,” she 
took one of my hands in hers, and hers were very hot, “if 
I went to her!” 

“To Paris?” 

“Yes. She—she does love me, whatever she does.” 

“But she— h 3 m —loves Gwynn, doesn’t she?” I asked, 
remembering Lady Ives’s opinion. 

Julia rose, the light of the nearly setting sun in her 
face. 

“Ho, Gray, she does not. Oh, I know! She has 
thought she loved three men before, poor child, and she 
has always, except once, been mistaken. In that she is 
like poor Mamma, she can’t help it.” 


Julia 


255 


“I know, dear, but-” 

“Hush. She did love Barton, and so sure as God hears 
me, I believe that if he had cared for her she would never 
have thought of another man.” 

“That may be, but-” 

“Here is Barton,” she went on hurriedly, pointing to 
the gate. “I am going to ask him.” 

It was no good my puzzling over her dumb resignation 
when she first spoke to me, and its irreconcilability with 
this sudden resolution. Everything in the world seemed 
to me to be illogical and mad, but there was Julia saying 
quite calmly to Midwood, after he had told her that he 
had done her bidding and sent her telegrams. “Barton, 
will you take me to her V* 

“Good God, Julia, I can’t do that!” 

“I mean, of course, as Humphrey can’t be got hold of 
in time, with Gray.” 

Inwardly I groaned as I protested not against my, but 
against her going. “It could do no possible good, Julia. 
Please don’t do it.” 

“Barton,” she went on as if I were not there, “you will 
take me, won’t you, and you will—forgive her ?” 

I have never in my life seen a sane face so ghastly and 
terrifying as that poor devil’s at that moment. I feared, 
before he spoke, that his brain was about to give way, 
but it did not, and after a pause he answered in a queer 
voice: 

“Yes, Julia, I will do whatever you say.” 

“Thank you. I will go and pack. We can catch the 
night boat if Adams does his best.” 

We followed her to the house, and on the way he told 
me that the telegrams he had sent were one to “Gwynn, 




Julia 


256 

Paris,” begging for twenty-four hours’ grace—“I suppose 
she had this idea, subconsciously buried under the excite¬ 
ment and confusion, all the time,” was his comment— 
and one to Yine-Innes, saying just, “Please come back 
immediately.” 

With a short laugh he added: “She is very grieved 
about his, Vine-Innes’s, distress over Sandra.” 

Neither of us mentioned Mrs. Cripps. 

When we reached the house Oscar expressed, very re¬ 
spectfully, his regrets and that of the other servants, “for 
the bad news about Mrs. Midwood,” and Midwood nodded 
gravely without answering. 

Half an hour later we were tearing through a peaceful 
lemon and lilac-coloured evening towards Dover, I sitting 
beside Julia, Midwood outside with Adams. 

We talked little, for there seemed nothing to say, and 
when we reached the boat Julia went to her cabin and 
stayed there till I fetched her to go on shore. 

I shall never forget that crossing. There was a Koyal 
wedding on in London, and that may have accounted for 
the boat’s not being over-crowded, but however that may 
be there were only a dozen or so people on deck, and Mid¬ 
wood and I were practically alone as we lay in our chairs 
smoking. 

He wore a cap, for it was windy, and kept it well 
down over his eyes, so that my rare glances at him did 
not teach me much. I could only see that he looked 
inexpressibly tired, and presently I knew from his breath¬ 
ing that he had fallen asleep. 

When h# waked up I asked him my one question, “Do 
you think it’s going to work ?” 

“No. But I’m going to do my best.” After a pause 


Julia 257 

he added, with a sort of dreary amusement, “Women are 
queer, aren’t they ?” 


[ iv ] 

At Amiens we were held up for three hours by the 
wreck of a cattle-train ahead of us, and when Midwood 
had managed to get us some coffee, I found an empty com¬ 
partment for Julia, and made her as comfortable as I 
could there, hoping she could sleep. It was after dawn 
when we reached Paris and rattled down the interminable 
rue Lafayette—or is it Avenue?—toward the hotel. 

Early morning in Paris has a charm of its own, but we 
were too early for any one but the scavengers and milk¬ 
women to be about, and the long drive was a weary 
enough thing. 

Julia and Midwood seemed to have, and probably had, 
for the time being, forgotten their own personal rela¬ 
tions, for all their guardedness had gone; they might have 
seemed to an onlooker, brother and sister. This at least, 
I thought, was good. 

When we had seen our rooms, and went into Julia’s 
little gilded salon for breakfast, Midwood, who had been 
downstairs, told us quietly that Mr. and Mrs. Preston 
Gwynn had a suite on the first floor, looking over the rue 
de Rivoli. 

“She,” he added, “is having her breakfast at nine. In 
her room.” 

A few minutes later as I passed Julia’s door on my way 
to mine, I noticed that it was ajar, and stopped to close 
it. I did so very softly indeed, for she was kneeling by 
her bed, praying. 


258 


Julia 

[ v ] 

Julia never told me how she prevailed on Sandra to go 
back to Midwood, but she did prevail, and when Midwood 
had taken his wife to London by the noon train, Julia and 
I had lunch together at Prunier’s. She looked very tired, 
but had a curious exalted expression, and seemed happy. 
As for me, I was not happy, except in the breathing- 
space that had come to my two friends, for I had no faith 
whatever in Sandra. 

She had, it is true, “made up” with her husband, but 
I believed her instability to be the only enduring thing 
about her, and had no faith in her remorse or her good 
resolutions. 

“You are glad, aren’t you, Gray ?” Julia asked me as 
I mused over my omelette. 

“Of course I am glad.” 

“There is one thing I want to tell you, dear Grigetto,” 
she went on, “one thing that she said to me. ‘Tell Gray 
that I am going to try.’ You see, she is so fond of 
you. . . .” 

“It is very kind of her,” I answered, stiffly in spite of 
myself. Luckily she did not notice my stiffness. 

“Barton is going to bring her down to King’s Camel on 
Thursday, for a few days,” she went on, “and Mr. Gwynn 
will be back at his house to-morrow, did you hear that ?” 

“No. Why does he come back?” 

“Because he’s having two cablegrams sent him from 
New York, calling him back there. His valet always 
reads his telegrams, he says, and he will read these two 
and tell everybody. It’s very clever of him, I think.” 


Julia 259 

“Very. Is his cleverness going to extend to his calling 
on Sandra to say good-bye ?” 

“Oh, Gray! Of course not. He’s going to ring up 
on Wednesday, while we are all at lunch, and ask for her, 
and then—then Humphrey will go to the telephone, and 
come hack to the table and give us all his good-bye mes¬ 
sages.” 

“I see. Will Humphrey like all this—cleverness?” 

Julia flushed scarlet as suddenly as if she had been 
struck in the face. “Humphrey isn’t to know anything 
about it,” she answered very low. “It would only dis¬ 
tress him, poor fellow, and Sandra begged me not to tell 
him. Ho one is to know but just us, Grigetto.” 

And curiously enough no one, to my knowledge, ever 
did, Julia’s story of Sandra’s slight illness having settled 
the servants except the chauffeur, whom Midwood heavily 
bribed. 

I collapsed rather badly on the boat, and old Sam, who 
had come to meet me, persuaded Julia to leave me with 
him for a day or two at the Lord Warden. 

“You will come straight to us as soon as you are able, 
Gray ?” she said to me as she sat by my bed drinking her 
tea, and I promised. 

But it was over two years, as things turned out, before 
I saw Julia Vine-Innes again. 


CHAPTER XV 
[ i ] 


T HE day after she left us Sam and I went for a drive 
in a taxi, and coming down the hill from the castle' 
something went wrong with the steering-gear, the chauf¬ 
feur lost control, and after three or four minutes of wildly 
zig-zagging down the road, we were pitched out, the chauf¬ 
feur was killed on the spot, and Sam and I both had 
rather bad concussion of the brain. 

Some passers-by took us back to the hotel, and as we 
were both unconscious, the King’s Camel people were not 
told. 

When I was able to sit up I found a letter from the 
Princess, which explains what had happened, from the 
outside point of view, then. 

“King’s Camel, 

“Sunday. 

“Caro Grigetto, 

“ Julia has asked me to write to you, as she hadn’t time 
before they started. She and Poodle, if you please, have 
gone to Brittany! Quite unlike Julia to be so unexpected, 
isn’t it? I suppose that silly wire of Sandra’s from 
London had really frightened her, and the drive to town 
was too tiring for her, but at all events she went to pieces 
after dinner, the evening she got back, and when Poodle 
mentioned to her a day or two afterwards that he was 
260 


Julia 


261 


going to Concarneau, she actually asked him to take her. 
So off they went, Poodle as pleased as possible, the dear. 

“Humphrey had a wire from Beg Meil saying that 
they are having a glorious time, so we are all delighted. 

“Sandra looks all right, but she seems rather tired, and 
Barton is going to take her to Deauville for a change. 
He is quite himself again—that man in London did him 
a world of good; I’ve taken down his address. What vile 
things nerves are! Fan is enjoying reading the Brown¬ 
ings’ love-letters. I have no patience with Mrs. Brown¬ 
ing, have you ? 

“Poodle gets on well with his book, and is working on 
it in Brittany, I believe. 

“Humphrey is going to stand for East Wallington, and 
is very keen. Oh, I forgot to tell you that Mr. Gwynn 
sailed for Hew York a few days ago. I didn’t see him, 
but his valet told our gardener’s wife that it was some¬ 
thing about Wall Street. A pity, and Sandra will miss 
him when she comes back. I rather think he was inclined 
to be fond of her, and we all know how she likes admira¬ 
tion. Ah, my dear Grigetto, she is very like her wicked 
old Granny in some ways! 

“Well, I guess, as you Americans say, that that’s all the 
news. My old man sends you his saluti affettuosissimi, 
and so does Frances. I send you my love, and a kiss for 
each cheek. 

“Your always aff., 

“Ambee Scabletta.” 

I was glad that Julia had gone away with her father, 
for his cheerful disregard of all except the most visible 
manifestations of things mental would, I knew, spare her 


Julia 


262 

any questions, and I hoped the change of scene would do 
her good. I was not surprised by her not writing to me, 
and was in no hurry to write to her, for a letter from me 
would only, I realised, recall to her mind memories she 
was trying to run away from. 

I was, moreover, much occupied with my own affairs, 
for my poor old Sam—he was nearly seventy—seemed 
unable to get over the shock he had received in the acci¬ 
dent. 

As soon as he was able to talk, he began to mourn for 
Bakersville; he seemed to feel that if he could but get 
there the “misery” in his head would cease. 

“Jus’ like to be settin’ in we-all’s back po’ch, Mas’ 
Gray,” he kept repeating like a mournful litany; “no one 
don’t stare at my black face in Bakersville.” 

And it was in vain that I told him that our back porch 
had gone years ago. He could not grasp it, and over and 
over he repeated his prayer: “Couldn’t we jus’ go back to 
Bakersville ?” It was very pathetic. 

When he was better I took him to Wimereux, meaning 
to go on to Italy as soon as we could both stand the jour¬ 
ney, but the poor old fellow grew no better, and as there 
was no earthly reason why I should go to Italy any more 
than anywhere else, we finally sailed from Havre one day 
in the first week of July. 

I had had a note from Sandra, from Deauville, just be¬ 
fore we sailed. 

“Dear Gray, 

“Sorry about the accident. What rotten luck! Do 
hope you are better ? This is just to thank you for having 
tried to back me up, and to tell you that Mother may, 


Julia 


263 


after all, turn out to have been right. Barton is being per- 
fectlv sweet to me, and really seems to enjoy being here. 
It is lovely, too. Did you know that he is really a marvel¬ 
lous swimmer, by the way ? Every one’s crazy about his 
swimming, and he’s teaching me all sorts of stunts. 

“I’ve told Mummy I’m sorry, Gray, so now you know,, 
too. Will you please buy a little present for poor Sam, 
with my love, with this ? 

“Sandba.” 


“This” was a five-pound note. 

[ n ] 

We settled for the rest of the summer in my aunt’s 
little cottage, which Dave Franklin had managed to get 
for me, and it was a very pleasant time for Sam, and 
would have been the same for me but for its having from 
the first been plain that the dear old man was, through¬ 
out it and the early fall, quietly, happily dying. 

We sat there in the “front po’ch” that he never quite 
realised not to be the one of the old house of his youth 
and my childhood, with a rug over his thin legs (which to 
his delight were now glorious in a pair of my grey and 
black striped trousers), a pillow behind him, and, at his 
side, a Bible that he could not read but that he loved to 
see there, and a plate of oranges. He ate dozens of 
oranges every day, peeling and dividing them with his old 
pink-lined fingers without spilling a drop of the juice, 
and popping each “quarter” into his mouth with a de¬ 
lighted roll of his spent eyes. 

The five-pound note, changed by me into five brand-new 


Julia 


264 

five-dollar bills, lay on the table, too, in a splendid new 
purse, and it was to him a matter of immense importance 
to decide what he was “evenshally” to buy with it. 

Echo Hopkins, who was kindness itself to him, bringing 
him, almost every day, something delicious for his dinner, 
told me that he was most anxious to buy me a dressing- 
case with ivory fittings, like Ives’s. “I have to put him off 
pretty hard, too,” she explained once, “for he can’t see 
why a great man like you should have only a plain, silver- 
fitted one!” 

There was also a plan for buying me enamel sleeve- 
links, like Midwood’s, but we usually quieted these gen¬ 
erous ideas, which were oddly pathetic, and distressed me. 

Peggy Emery stopped over for a day on her way out to 
Kitty’s—Kitty’s little girl was at that time imminent— 
and she, too, did all she could to cheer the old man’s last 
days, and altogether I was very glad that I had been able 
to take him back to the old town. 

I read a great deal during the early autumn, did some 
fairly good short stories, and completed my first “movie” 
play. 

September was a magnificent month, the trees seeming 
to have gathered from the sky something of its gold and 
crimson splendour, the air just tinged with crispness, and 
sweet to the nose. 

Sam grew weaker from day to day, and presently I 
noticed that his mind had gone back to the past, never to 
return for long. I was, during the last three weeks, “little 
Gray,” and he took Mrs. Hopkins (who was not at all con¬ 
fused, as an Englishwoman of her kind would, I believe, 
have been by the mistake) for my mother. 


Julia 


265 


“Yas’m,” he said once to Echo, “he sits up too late 
with them hooks of his, you wanna look after dat chile, 
Mis’ McFadden. . . .” 

And Echo said that she would. 

The woman who kept house for me had a baby, and this 
baby, a rosy creature of two, fell in love with my old 
coloured man, and used to bring him little hot crumpled 
bunches of nearly stemless flowers, which he would try to 
pin to his coat, and which would scatter down his waist¬ 
coat and on to his legs unnoticed by either of them. 
“ Mother bookay,” she would cry, stumbling up the steps 
on all-fours, “ ’nother one, Sam Smiffett. . . 

Perhaps he confused her healthy pink and white face 
with the poor little pallid one that had been mine at her 
age, for one evening I came out, after a long go at a story, 
to find him holding her in his arms, trying to make her 
say a prayer that I have no doubt she had never heard. 
“Now you say it, honey,” I caught, and stopped to listen. 
“ ‘Now I lay me downtersleep. . . .’ ” 

But she was asleep, and I took her from him and called 
Mrs. Green, her mother, and sat down by him. 

It was only about eight, but October had come and the 
sun slid down behind Baker Hill, and the air was fresh. 

“Mas’ Gray,” the old man said suddenly, smiling at me, 
“we-all’s had a pretty good time here.” 

“Yes, Sam, yes. . . 

“You-all’s been very good to me.” 

“You’ve been good to me, Sam. You’ve been a true 
friend.” 

“Do you-all believe in God, Mas’ Gray ?” 

“I do, dear Sam.” 


Julia 


266 

“Then, sir/’ he said with a great dignity, “will yon jus’ 
say de Lord’s Prayer with me ?” 

I did, as best I could, for my throat was full of tears, 
and then I asked him if I should help him to bed. 

“No, Mas’ Gray, no, thank you. Reckon I’ll jus’ sit 
here a while.” 

And he sat there, my hand in his, until I knew that he 
had left me for good. 

[ ni ] 

We buried him near my mother and father, and then 
I left Bakersville, a sad and very lonely man. At every 
turn I missed my old friend, and it was hard for me to 
wake in the morning and see the indifferent, alert face of 
my new servant, instead of the loving, wrinkled one I 
had seen every day since I could remember. 

I went hack to Rome efficiently valeted and looked 
after—he was, he told me, used to invalid gentlemen, and 
I hated him for the word—by Henderson, hut it was cold 
and rainy in Rome: the canyon-like streets alternately 
swept by icy wind and dark with scirocco, and before 
Christmas I fled up to my little “house” at Monreale, 
above Palermo. 

Here there was sunshine, and rain or shine, one of the 
world’s most beautiful views spread below my rusty iron 
balcony. It was here that I wrote to Julia, from whom 
I had not heard since having a hurried note, written in 
London, to express her sympathy about Sam’s death. 

I have her reply and one or two other letters that will 
carry me on to the end of her story, qua story. 


Julia 


267 


“46a, Portman Square, 
“London. 

“January 7 th, 

“Dear Gray, 

“Please don’t be angry with me for not writing oftener, 
for I have been so very busy, and poor Prances failed so 
rapidly that I really had no time. She died, as Mamma 
wrote you to Rome, on the twenty-first of December. 
Poodle is dreadfully lonely, and looks much older. He is 
here with Humphrey and me, and Mamma and Muzio are 
sharing this toe-big house with us. 

“Humphrey was returned, as you know, don’t you? 
And he is enjoying being in the House. He talks very 
well, I believe, and his ‘Chief’ is very much pleased 
with him. 

“Muzio sang at a house where Queen Alexandra was 
the other night, and she was delighted with his voice, and 
most kind to him. He is going to a massage and gym¬ 
nastic place, and rolls on the floor and rides on an awfully 
bouncy, wooden horse every day to try to keep from get¬ 
ting fatter. He sends you his love. 

“I hope the new valet is all right ? Poor old Sam, you 
must miss him awfully. 

“Sandra and Barton are in South America still, and 
seem to be enjoying it. Sandra rode a mule up to one of 
the highest towns in the world, and said she loved every 
minute of it. Barton had a go of fever in September, but 
it wasn’t serious, and he is all right again. 

“I have been chaperoning my cousin Lily Blakeley’s 
two girls while she, Lily, has a rest-cure, and you’d be 
surprised to see how frivolous I have grown. Seriously, 


Julia 


268 

it does amuse me to go about again. I don’t believe it’s 
good for one to get too rusty, after all. 

“Now mind you forgive me, dear Grigetto, for not hav¬ 
ing written for so long. 

“I am, as ever, 

“Yours affectionately, 

“Julia Viot-Innes.” 

“London. 

“January 30th. 

“Dear Gray, 

“Thanks so much for having the orchids sent on my 
birthday. They mitigated that horrid day a little! 
Muzio gave me a big chinchilla muff and stole, in which, 
as, like Musetta, ‘I go alone through the streets,’ I have 
a great success —from behind! 

“Muzio has lost seven pounds, and is celebrating to¬ 
night by eating lobster, and drinking champagne. 

“Have you read of Humphrey’s success ? We are all so 
pleased. Julia is looking handsomer than she has looked 
since her illness just before Sandra’s marriage. But she 
has changed, somehow, of late. Perhaps you know why ? 
I don’t. By the way, did you ever notice that our im¬ 
peccable Humphrey was having a small hihoot with Eva 
Cripps? Because Muzio told me the other day—just 
after Eva’s marriage—that he had had. At King’s 
Camel, last summer, Muzio says. He swears it’s true, 
and he’s usually right. What a fortunate thing Julia 
didn’t know, she’s always been so utterly devoted to 
Humphrey. 

“Bobby Custance, Eva’s ‘permanent victim,’ as Muzio 
calls him, is a charming boy, but twelve years younger 


Julia 


269 


than her (!). She seems very pleased with him, hut it’s 
early days yet. Sandra is dancing her head off in—is it 
Rio de something or other, or Buenos Ayres ? and Barton 
seems to he enjoying a little gaiety, too. How well that 
marriage has turned out. He seems to have the young 
madam completely under his thumb, more power to it. 
Write some day, and be kind, for my sake, to that dear 
friend of mine, Gray McFadden. 

“Yours sincerely, 

“Amber Scarletta.” 

In February I went to Algiers to join the Maddoxes, 
and when I got back to Rome in May it was so hot that 
I fled, accompanied by the efficient Henderson, to the 
Austrian Tyrol for the summer. 

During this period I received the news of Ives’s sudden 
death, and at once wrote to Julia and the Princess, but 
for weeks I heard nothing from any of them, and when 
I did it was only a short note of apology from Scarletta. 

“Ambra is of course much distracted,” he wrote, “by 
poor Poodle’s death. She had always been devoted to him, 
you know. And Julia was prostrated. Just think of his 
popping off like that, in her very arms! Sandra and 
Barton sent a cablegram from some town, the name of 
which we ignore. Ah, my dear* Grigetto, ‘in the midst of 
life we are in death,’ as my dear wife beautifully ex¬ 
pressed it yesterday. Our salutes to you. 

“Scarletta.” 

I wrote to Julia for the following Christmas, sending 
her some little gift, and in return I received the first 


270 


Julia 


photograph I had ever owned of her. She looked very 
distinguished in what I thought must he black; her two 
white locks had grown, and she was thin, but her noble 
beauty was very striking, as was the somewhat melancholy 
look in her eyes. 

I had seen by the papers that Vine-Innes was main¬ 
taining his political success, and that his house had be¬ 
come a gathering-place for his political Allies and sup¬ 
porters. Julia’s letter had said only, “Imagine me in 
my old days giving and going to several dinner-parties 
every week! I must say, however, that I enjoy them 
in a way, and Humphrey says I am really useful to 
him. . . .” 

As a postscript she added, thus making her first and 
only written reference to the matter of Sandra and 
Gwynn, “Adams, our chauffeur, who married one of the 
laundry maids at King’s Camel, has a little girl, whose 
godmother I became yesterday. They are good, faithful 
people, and I was glad to give them this little pleasure. 
The baby is lovely. . . 

So for once a bribe had not brought disaster in its 
wake. In March of that year my old friend Frank 
Maddox and I went to the Far East. He had lost his 
wife and little girl of diphtheria a few weeks before, and 
was, I imagine, afraid to go alone, so he asked me to join 
him. 

We travelled slowly, and as time went on he began to 
feel the interest he had been feigning in the places we 
went to. We spent June and July at Hikko, and up at 
Lake Chusenji, where the hills are covered with flowering 
frees, and where the water is as clear as the air. Many 
of the diplomats from Tokio were there, and the two 



Julia 


271 


months brought the beginning of healing to Maddox, and 
immense relaxation and pleasure to me. It was not till 
November that I found myself again in Palermo on my 
way to Monreale. Maddox had sailed for New York from 
Naples, and knowing that I should at first be at a loss 
without him, I stayed for a few days at the Hygeia, to 
accustom myself to the loneliness I should not have 
noticed had old Sam been alive. 

And it was here that I received the last letter I had 
from Julia before we met in Rome. 


“London. 

“October 30. 

“Dear Gray, 

“I wonder if you have missed me as I have missed you. 
For I know quite well that for the last two years and 
more—ever since I left you and poor old Sam, at Dover— 
my letters to you have not been real letters at all. And 
now I have decided to tell you why, and I 7 m sure you will 
understand and forgive me. The evening I reached 
King’s Camel, from Paris, I was, as you know, intensely 
grateful to God for having given me the strength to get 
Sandra away from that man. I give you my word of 
honour that Barton was in my mind, that evening, only 
as my daughter’s husband, and I was so grateful to have 
that deep, ceaseless pain gone, that I had sat in the car 
half the time with my eyes shut, flooded with prayer, 
though I did not put it into words. 

“I knew even then that William Adams was trust¬ 
worthy, though he did take Barton’s hundred pounds, and 
I was thankful that Humphrey would never be hurt, as 
I had been, by knowing about Sandra. I had always been 


272 


Julia 


fond of Humphrey, as you know, and I determined to put 
every other thought but him out of my heart for ever. Up 
to then I had kept what you know in my heart, though I 
did not show it. I found no one at home, Humphrey had 
not wired, and Mamma and Muzio were having tea at the 
cottage. 

“I went upstairs and changed and then sat down in the 
chintz-room to wait for Mamma. 

“There were some notes on the table, one I saw was a 
blue-book on housing conditions that Humphrey had been 
reading the morning before, while he waited for the car 
to take him to Mettingham. 

“I opened it with a vague wish I had a better brain, 
and could understand the things that interested him. And 
in the book, Gray, I found a note to him from Eva Cripps. 
It showed that she had been his mistress for weeks, and 
jeered at him for his Tender conscience/ ending up with 
To as you feel ashamed, my dear Humphrey, and as the 
mental atmosphere of your wife’s house is a bit too rare¬ 
fied for my sinful lungs, I am going up to town. In case 
you should wish to write me a fond farewell, you’ll find 
me, for a day or two, at Brown’s, in Dover Street.’ 

“Can you believe, Gray, that I was not only sick with 
disgust and anger, but violently jealous as well? For I 
was. I left a note for Mamma, saying that Sandra had 
not got flu after all, and that you, Gray, were not coming 
back for a day or two, and that I had gone to bed with 
a headache, and then I went to my room, got rid of 
Fountain, and lay, crying, on my bed till daylight. 

“I won’t bore you by telling you how I felt, or what 
wild plans I made. 

“In the morning I decided that I must do—nothing. 


Julia 273 

Barton was doing his best with his wife, I must do my 
best with my husband. And I have done it. 

“Nobody knows that I know. 

“I never knew whether Humphrey went on seeing Eva, 
or how he felt about her marriage. I don’t care. I was 
never jealous after that night. What I did care for was 
to do my best to help him in his political career, and he 
says I have done that. 

“I suppose you are wondering why, after over two 
years, I am raking it all up now? 

“This is why: Yesterday I found that for the past 
three months Humphrey has been ‘keeping’ (oh, isn’t it 
a horrid phrase!) a little girl from some ‘beauty chorus.’ 
Her name is ‘Tommy’ something, and he has given her a 
little house in Chelsea, and a ‘Sunbeam’ car. 

“I heard a man who had come to see about the electric 
fittings tell Crompton, our parlour-maid. It seems he put 
in the fittings in her house, as well! Wasn’t it stupid of 
Humphrey? Oh, Gray, I am very miserable! Why 
can’t men be decent ? I have not told Humphrey I know, 
for it would only make him angry, it couldn’t change him. 

“Besides, I have seen very little of him for a long 
time now, he is really busy at the House—he’s very use¬ 
ful on committees, the Prime Minister told me not long 
ago—and I have been trying to work in various ways. 

“So I am going to jog on as usual, Gray, and this 
letter to you is the only luxury I can allow myself. For 
one thing, I am very thankful Sandra and Barton are 
happy. Thank God for that. If he were not happy I 
don’t believe I could stand it. Or perhaps I mean (being 
so old-fashioned!) that if he were not good, I could not 
bear it. 


274 


Julia 


“I have loved him so long that his honour has become 
mine, and his strength holds me up. There is no one 
like him. 

“If they come back to England this summer I am going 
to Norway with Mamma and Muzio. Barton and I must 
not meet until I am quite, quite old. But that won’t be 
long now, Grigetto. I am forty-seven, you know. Do 
write and say you understand why I never told you 
before, and that you think I am doing right. My love 
to you; please bum this letter. 

“Yours affectionately, 

“Julia.” 

It was the first time since her marriage that she had 
not signed herself by her surname. 

I wrote at once, of course, but I heard no more from 
her, and after a quiet winter, and long, busy summer in 
the Yal d ? Aosta and the Tirol, and a delightful autumn 
in Vienna, I came back to a mild autumn in Rome, and 
again settled down in my pleasant house for a winter of 
rest and recreation. 

Just before Christmas I dined at the Monteleones’, and 
the first face I saw when I had shaken hands with Donna 
Cesarina was a pleasant, rosy one, that I did not at once 
place. 

“Now fie on you, Mr. McEadden, not to recognise me. 
Or perhaps,” the old lady added less loudly, “you are in¬ 
clined to connect me with my wretch of a god-daughter by 
marriage V 9 

“What do you mean, my dear Mrs. Angell V 9 

“I mean your horrid little Sandra, of course,” she an¬ 
swered, smiling quite pleasantly. 


Julia 


275 


“But what-” 

“Bless my soul, don’t you know?” 

I explained that I had heard nothing direct from 
Sandra or Barton for over three years, and not even in¬ 
directly, through the Vine-Innes connection, for just four¬ 
teen months. 

“And no one has told you ?” 

“No” 

“Well, I’ll give you the details after dinner. In the 
meantime I’ll tell you only that he divorced her —he her, 
mind you—in July, and that he married, about five weeks 
ago, a lady from Boston. An old friend, I believe.” 

At that moment I had to give my arm to my dinner- 
partner, and take her to the dining-room. Who the lady 
was, what she said, what we ate, I have not the least idea. 
The hour and a half that we sat there at the table was to 
me a nightmare of unspeakable horror, and when the 
ladies had left us, I excused myself to Piero Monteleone, 
and left the house. Nothing mattered but for me to get 
to the telegraph office as soon as I could. 

I cabled to Julia, begging for an immediate reply, and 
then I went home and spent the greater part of the night 
walking up and down the library. 

That Sandra had richly deserved to be divorced I did 
not doubt, but that Barton had married I could not have 
believed, if my informant had not been his godmother 
and old friend. What had Julia done ? I cursed my in¬ 
difference to newspapers, my laziness about writing 
letters, the way in which I had allowed my interest that 
summer to become absorbed by those French people, and 
the Baron and Baroness von Shonen. 

What had my poor Julia been enduring since I heard 


276 


Julia 


from her? And why had she not written to me again? 

Several of my letters had, in being forwarded and re¬ 
forwarded, gone astray since I went north in the spring, 
and it tortured me to think that she had in all probability 
written to me, and been astounded and hurt by my failure 
to reply. 

That was a dreadful night. 

The next day was as bad or worse, for no reply came to 
my telegram. I wired then, to Yine-Innes at the London 
address, to Scarletta, both to London and to King’s Camel, 
and, on hearing nothing from them, to Godfrey Lavington. 

For a week the silence continued, and then came a very 
kind letter from Amy Lavington, written at Cannes. 

She told me, to be brief, that in the preceding April 
Sandra had made a fool—and a conspicuous one—of her¬ 
self over some young Spaniard, and that Midwood had 
left her and taken immediate proceedings for divorce. 

She made no defence, and by the beginning of July he 
was free. 

“He was staying with Boston friends during the sum¬ 
mer,” Mrs. Lavington went on, “and it is the daughter of 
those people that he married. I think her name was 
Train.” 

Train. Traill, I knew it must be. Old Mrs. Critten¬ 
den’s son-in-law’s cousin, Jane Traill. 

“Sandra has married the man, whose name I forget, and 
they are now dancing on the stage in Hew York. Some 
one told Godfrey that she was a great success.” 

I searched her letter in vain for Julia’s name, and then 
found on the floor a half-sheet on which she had added, “I 
can’t tell you much about Mrs. Yine-Innes, as she has left 
Colonel Yine-Innes and their divorce is just coming on. 


Julia 


277 


I can hardly believe that it is all true, and yet it is. She 
went quite openly. Everybody is most awfully sorry. Of 
course one knows that she will have taken poor Sandra’s 
part against Captain Midwood, but the rest seems a mys¬ 
tery to every one. . . .” 

After that, silence. 

I could of course have written to London for the July 
newspapers, but I heard from old Mrs. Angell that Mid¬ 
wood had taken out papers of naturalisation in the United 
States a year after his marriage, so that his divorce would 
have taken place there, and besides, I felt a queer shrink¬ 
ing from knowing the details of the story. 

I happened to know the address of Tucker & Bligh, 
Vine-Innes’ solicitors, in London, and sent a letter to 
Julia in their care, but it was returned with “address un¬ 
known” written on it. 

I wrote to Vine-Innes himself, asking him to be kind 
enough to forward an enclosed letter to Julia, and saying 
that I was very sorry to hear of his troubles. That letter 
was returned with a civil enough note in which he said 
that he had no idea where Julia was. 

So I gave up, and tried to put her out of my head. 

At the end of Eebruary I received a London Daily Mail 
with a column-long article in it about Vine-Innes’ divorce. 
There was an unnamed co-respondent, and Vine-Innes’ be¬ 
haviour was, one could gather, dignified and well bred. 
He spoke of his wife with respect and admiration. But 
he got his case, and was of course none the worse for it. 

My address was written on the newspaper-wrapper in 
a big sprawling-looking hand that I felt sure must be 
Mrs. Robert Custance’s, and pinned at the end of the 
article I found a small cutting from another paper. 


278 


Julia 


“ Am ong those staying at the Royal-Victoria Hotel,” it 
said, “are Lord and Lady Belhampton, Sir Edward and 
Lady Everard Smith, Mr. Adelbert Schmiedel of Amer¬ 
ica, Mrs. Julia Ives of England, Miss Potter, Miss Wills, 
also of England, Mr. Lionel Walsh of Paris, and Mrs. 
Odella of Milan.” 

Mr. Lionel Walsh’s name was underlined. Julia’s was 
not. I sent a wire to the hotel in question, hut received 
no reply. 

I had a very sad spring that year, and could not work 
at all. I was convinced of Eva Custance’s having marked 
the name in the paper out of malice, hut I was bitterly 
unhappy about Julia, and hurt almost beyond endurance 
by her never writing to me. She might, I thought, have 
trusted me. 

It was a very warm night in late April that I saw her 
at last. 

I was dining with some American friends at the 
Quirinal Hotel, and after dinner we were sitting in the 
big lounge, drinking coffee and listening to the orchestra. 
Suddenly my hostess said, “What a striking-looking 
woman that is up there in the balcony, Mr. McEadden,” 
and it was Julia. She was listening to the music, her 
elbows on the railing, and she was looking steadily at me. 

I excused myself to my hostess, who with the rest of 
the party was in any case going on to see Duse, and made 
my way slowly through the crowd of little tables—to 
J ulia. 

We shook hands and I sat down. 

“I am glad to see you, Gray,” she said. “I should have 
sent a message to you if you hadn’t turned and seen me.” 


Julia 279 

“Why,” I asked, “have you treated me so out- 
rageously V ’ 

“How, outrageously?” 

“It is nearly a year and a half since I had a letter 
from you.” 

She nodded. “I was ashamed,” she said gently. 

“Of what, Julia?” 

“Of us all, Gray.” 

“It was unkind of you, hut never mind that now. 
Why did you—give up ?” 

She did not answer, and I watched her for a moment, 
in silence. She was dressed far more richly than of old; 
she wore a string of big pearls, an immense emerald was 
on her hand. 

“Are you happy?” I asked, as some boys and girls 
began fox-trotting in the room behind us. 

“Ho.” 

“Julia—tell me.” 

“There’s nothing to tell, Grigetto. Sandra—you know 
about her. You knew about Humphrey before, for I 
wrote it to you. I suppose I was tired. At all events, 
when Barton gave up—or gave out—I could stand no 
more.” 

"Why did he do it?” 

“I’ve told you. He had done his best for years, he 
knew I would never see him again, for he’d written— 
just before the smash—to ask me to, and I had said no— 
and so he gave up. She is very nice in every way, I am 
told. She is going to have a baby.” 

“Oh, Julia!” 

“Yes. And I am glad. That,” she added with a little 
laugh, “is all I can do now, be glad for him.” 


280 


Julia 


“But you, dear, tell me about yourself,” I urged. 

“Ob—my husband is very kind to me-” 

“So you’re married!” 

She stared at me. “But of course I am, Gray.” 

“Oh, I—see. Who is he ?” 

“His name is Walsh, Lionel Walsh, isn’t it a funny 
name? He is half American, I’ve known him for two 
years. He—he says he fell in love with me at first sight, 
and I suppose he must have. Just as if I’d been young! 
But then,” she went on, “he isn’t young either—he’s fifty- 
five.” 

“And do you Wee him ?” 

“Of course. He is very kind to me.” 

And so, I thought, had Yine-Innes been; very kind. 
And that was all life had given her. 

“Will you come and dine with me ?” 

“Thanks. We are going north to-morrow.” 

“Where do you live?” 

“In Paris. He has a house in the Avenue du Bo is. It 
is a beautiful house-” 

“Julia, dear Julia,” I cried, “do be real with me. I 
can’t bear this.” 

Then, thank God, she smiled, her old, sweet, kind smile, 
and her honest, sad eyes looked into mine. 

“I am real, Gray. There’s only one thing I haven’t 
told you.” 

“Yes. Why did you do it ?” 

“For one thing,” she said, “I could in that way live out 
of England, and not meet any one I had ever known. All 
his friends are French or American. He hates England.” 

“Ah. Eva Cripps sent me a newspaper with your name 
in the hotel list. His was in it, too.” 






Julia 


281 


“Yes. He took me there. He was at the house when 
Barton’s letter came. I—I don’t remember very much 
about the next week, but he was very good to me.” 

“Did you meet him in London 

“Ho. At Concarneau with P—with Poodle,” she said 
softly. “Poodle said—well, Poodle liked him when he 
got to know him better, and he came to London to see 
me. Just think, Gray, at my age ...” 

“Dear Julia,” I returned, “I think my friendship de¬ 
serves the truth from you. Tell me why you have mar¬ 
ried this man ?” 

She glanced over her shoulder and then for one second 
laid her hand on mine. 

“There is,” she said, “no need for me to tell you. Look, 
here he comes. . . .” 

He made his way towards us with a slight swagger as 
people turned to look at him—a tall, handsome man, with 
an unjustified air of being over-dressed. I saw at once 
that he must he what indiscriminating people call a good 
fellow; I saw that his face was selfishly good-natured; I 
saw that he was at the moment not quite sober, and that 
he was not quite a gentleman. 

“Remember,” Julia murmured, as he drew near, “he is 
very kind, Gray. . . .” 

And then as he over-cordially shook my hand, I recog¬ 
nised him. 

He was the man I had, years before, in the Trocadero 
Grill Room, mistaken for Barton Midwood. 

THE EHD 


Sicily, April, 1924. 










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